


Arsonist's Lullaby

by SwordSoup



Series: You're not an anarchist. [1]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: 2b2t, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anarchy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Arson, BAMF Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Backstory, Betrayal, Bird Hybrid TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Blood and Injury, Childhood Trauma, Dark, Ghost Wilbur Soot, Good Jschlatt (Video Blogging RPF), Good is relative! He's not a villain but he's sure as hell not, Heavy Angst, Hurt Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Hurt Wilbur Soot, Hurt/Comfort, Hybrids, Identity Reveal, Insane Wilbur Soot, Manipulative Clay | Dream (Video Blogging RPF), Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Parent Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Parental Jschlatt (Video Blogging RPF), Perfect, Phil Watson Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Psychological Trauma, Role Reversal, Scared TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Secret Identity, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, Sleepy Bois Inc-centric, Survivor Guilt, Technoblade and Tommy basically swap roles, TommyInnit Hears Voices (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit comes from 2b2t, Traumatized Tommyinnit (Video Blogging RPF), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator, War, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, Wingfic, no beta we die like tommyinnit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:03:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 54,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SwordSoup/pseuds/SwordSoup
Summary: When Tommy was a child, his family left him. They left -- for better and greater things -- leaving him behind in a great old empty house without a word. So he set their garden on fire, stretched his wings, and flew away. Only after years, ruling desolate lands with a body that can barely contain him, does he hear of them again, and does he find his way home.(Wilbur and Technoblade create L'Manberg. Tommy is left behind. He finds himself in 2b2t, and by some miracle, he learns to fight. Then, after wars, after deaths, after destruction and insanity, he finds that his siblings have been shoved into a battle all their own.)
Relationships: Dream SMP Ensemble & TommyInnit, Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: You're not an anarchist. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2196141
Comments: 400
Kudos: 1057
Collections: Despair's Favourite Works





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Woot woot! New story! With an egregiously long first chapter! Whoops. 
> 
> For this story, you're gonna need to employ some suspension of belief. Tommy, of course, as an ACTUAL child, would fail miserably in the chaos of 2b2t. Tommy in this story is a Minecraft character with wings and enhanced senses, so I'm gonna say he does ok. Techno, logically, has to like anarchy for a reason. HE STILL WILL. This is not the "Techno says I love government" story. This is a story about what would have happened should he have been the one to help found L'Manberg, and how anarchy was always a part of his destiny. Wilbur likely would never, ever abandon his family like in this story. Trust me: neither him nor Technoblade think they abandoned anyone. You'll find out why they didn't return later.
> 
> By the end of the first chapter:  
> Tommy is 16.  
> Wilbur is 24.  
> Techno is 21.  
> Philza is around his fourties, but years and age work differently for him.
> 
> I really, really hope you all enjoy!

When Tommy was nine, his brothers left home.

They had a destiny, and if that destiny was lucky, they would _maybe_ come back when it was finished. Philza had been melancholy; his youngest son had been devastated. Wilbur and Techno had a dream of cities and kingdoms and self-made stars and pillars of strength. Phil just wanted his kids. Tommy just wanted to _be_ one.

(Not that he’d ever been a child, not really. Plagued with things in his head that toyed with him like he was just a piece of paper for them to scribble across, writing so hard the paper was torn. The voices wanted things from him and had for years. Things he wasn’t sure he wanted to give them.)

It was several years before Phil left for a vacation of sorts. Tommy had been around eleven, grinning up at his father and thinking about all the odd things he could do without his family with him. Without Wilbur and Techno, without his father, entirely on his own. The snow in his miniature world was home, and he trekked through it, finding a village on his third day. He managed to get a job soon after, promising himself he would surprise his father when the man came home. He’d be stronger, richer, with friends made all across the world. 

It was only by the third week that Tommy realized Phil was gone. He’d been through a mug of tea, reading the funny page of the local village’s news. He’d been sitting, with a pile of emeralds beside him, in front of the fire, in Phil’s chair, squishy and soft and perfect. For a moment, it had felt like a hug from his father.

And then Tommy had burst into tears.

 _Blood blood blood_ screamed the voices. Sometimes, he still found himself being optimistic. He was never quite as idealistic as Wilbur, or as cynically excited as Techno, but he would look out the window and he would see a feather, and he would hope. Only when his own wings began to grow, arduous and painful, losing down, did he realize he was utterly, and completely, alone. Not a single one of his family members had responded to his messages since they’d left him. 

So Tommy left.

He abandoned his job. His village. His home. He shuttered up the windows and set fire to the garden outside for good measure, rummaging around in the rooms of his family members, untouched since they’d all disappeared. He took as many rare or shiny looking things as he could, six stacks of golden apples, and his father’s winter cloak, stained red.

The land outside of his small home was barren and dark. His first week, he was nearly killed by a _skeleton,_ his body so wrecked he had to resort to stealing from pillagers. Who, after finding him camping along the treeline, almost murdered him again.

After that, he learned not to make camp where anyone else could be. He killed two of the stupid pillagers ( _blood blood good job good job_ ) and stole their clothes, sewing together a stronger tent with the materials he’d begun to gain. Traveling was an interesting affair. He found more villages and took odd jobs, becoming more and more useful when his wings started to even out and he could fly for longer and longer. They’re strong, beautiful, even, their feathers having caught him a pretty penny amongst the tailors and artists of the villages he found. They’re nothing like his father’s, and he notes this with pride. Broad, thick, starting at a light taupe and trickling down into a deep, marvelous red and orange. They’re the color of fire. 

Phil’s had been like a true bird’s. Long and brown, fading into black near the ends. Wilbur had no wings. Techno had fangs. They were an odd bunch. Once, when his brothers had left, Tommy had felt vindictively happy with his similarities to his father. Wilbur and Techno had abandoned them, the most special of the family, jealous of Phil and his favorite son’s flight. Tommy had quickly grown to realize Phil cared just as little for him as he did for the others, as uncaring with all. 

Then, his wings are tools. He ended his fixation on them, preferring to flash them only when he knew it would impress or scare. Eventually they’d grown long enough for perfect flight, enough so that he ditches walking, going further from the place he would never call home again. 

Sometimes, he looked for Phil amongst the clouds.

When he was twelve, the voices inside of him started… growing. He hadn’t been the only one with them -- an unfortunate curse of his father’s bloodline. Wil’s had been tame, guiding his art, guiding his hands through guitar strings and poetic romanticism. Techno’s had been brutal, competitive, but not gruesome, instead making him a fierce and intelligent competition in any activity. Tommy’s had been like his father’s.

_Violent._

He thinks they all had the potential for the voices to turn bloody. But his siblings were lucky; theirs were _manageable_. Suppressible. By the time they’d left him alone, they hadn’t had issues with them in years. 

Phil’s had once had his children watch him claw a pillager’s throat out with his teeth.

(It was a very rare occasion for Phil’s voices to get the better of him. But the desire for gore will always get to be too much, too loud, and no one is perfect.)

When Tommy is twelve, he discovers just how terrible the things that reside within him can become. He’d been in the middle of a battle against several zombies, the undead beasts advancing upon him and shuddering, groaning, as his sword passed through their chests and up into their heads. He beheaded one and ran through the gap they left in the circle, panting heavily as they’d started to chase him again, lurching with their broken limbs. And the _voices-_

When Tommy woke up from whatever he’d succumbed to, the zombies were dead. _Desecrated._ They’d been torn about, bodies shattered and ripped and bitten. Someone had ripped through their skin and _chewed,_ leaving indents of fingernails and teeth all across their bodies. Tommy felt gristle and saw green beneath his fingernails. His teeth were stained red.

He’d collapsed into the bloody scene and started to scream.

After about five days of lying in his own carnage as some sort of _penance,_ body soaked through with blood and ice and snow, a group of pillagers had found him. He’s unsure what happened next, so dissociated and caught up in his own horror. He thinks, if he had been Wilbur, or if he had been Techno, or if he had been _dad,_ it would have been ok. They would have been ok. They would have been able to resist. 

_(Blood blood blood.)_

As for him: he’d woken up in the bottom of a coliseum, a crowd screaming above him as a man nearly four times larger than him and wielding a bright purple crystal advanced upon him. It had taken one explosion for Tommy to be obliterated into a thousand tiny pieces of ash.

Only to wake up, seconds later, in a desolate, lava-filled, and pyramid-spotted landscape.

He later learned that the pillagers who had sold him had sent him off to a land called 2b2t. It was an ancient world, one of the eldest strongholds of all in a war that had raged for millennia. Eventually, it had become solely chaos. No rules, no enforcing that which didn’t exist, nothing at all to keep you safe. The purple crystal he’d seen turned out to be called an “End Crystal,” and was an exceptionally powerful explosive. He found that despite his very _mortal_ life at home, this new, destructive land was hell on earth. No matter how many times a sword went through his breast or his screamed into an already detonated explosion, he’d wake again, his back to the stone and his eyes red with the lava surrounding him. 

He fought, though, getting extraordinarily lucky when a passerby shrugged at his begging at the beginning of his life there, giving him a chest called a shulker box, filled to the brim with items that should not have been able to exist. Elytra. End crystals. Stacks of enchanted golden apples. Armor with things that did not exist stuck to them in glowing swirls of purple and blue, painted with runes that felt like sacrilege to view. 

Tommy did not ask to grow up in a land of desolation. He’d had a home, and a family, once, same as most of the souls that were doomed to 2b2t. 

That past, though, his family and his love were soon forgotten entirely as he learned just how _right_ this violence could feel. How _right_ the voices could be. To survive, he would have to be brutal, and cruel, stocking his body with weapons and learning how to reverse all the vulnerability his father had said was _right._ He quickly discovered that having a mark as distinctive as _permanent elytras stuck to his back_ made one a _very_ large target -- as if no one else can fly, why should he? He walked his days on a wire, waiting for the next arrow through his brains or sword carving through his sternum. 

So he learned how to fight. It didn’t take long for long-past sparring lessons to sink back into his mind, or for him to shield up and understand crystal warfare. He thought back to how ruthless and unrelenting Techno, his _brother,_ could be, and taught himself to do the same. To do _better._ Through it all the voices had sung, and he had found that he _liked_ it, when they egged him on, when they protected him. He loses control far less often when he _chooses_ to be violent. And somehow, as he’d learned how to coexist with the Blood in mind, they’d become kind. 

They’d alert him to hits seconds before they landed. They’d tell him what things he could eat and what could be poisoned. Once, at his start in the place, he’d been bed trapped, and one of them told him how he could escape. They couldn’t save him from developing crippling claustrophobia, but he learned from it in an instant and appreciated their aid regardless. He fights and he fought and he fought with them by his side, and somewhere along the way, he started to _win._

Then began the whispers. The whispers, few and far between, of a killer. Wrapped in netherite and gold and with far more Tokens of Undying than they should have. A purveyor of their own anarchic justice in their broken land, killing for fun whoever they see fit. Of someone who could be doused in gasoline, wings torn and set alight, and who could _survive._ They called them as such, named after the ancient bird that once flew in the land. Those whispers grew. Those whispers formed. Tommy became Phoenix, and the world wept lava that burned in his presence. He devastated the land about him, taking what was rightfully no ones and making it _his._

The first word he ever heard of anything familiar outside of 2b2t is some new, building territory south of his former home. The call for the place had been _Dream,_ nothing else. It was ruled by a relatively peaceful beast, a history of war and cunning that had built into his desire to retire. But then came _whispers._ Rumors of something black and faceless. Of green and deep, endless nothingness. Of a soul as black as coal and as cold as ice. This ruler had been meant to be benevolent, but the people of 2b2t enjoy their stories nonetheless. The only reason Tommy ever even figured out _Dream_ could be possibly related to his home is when it is begun to be labeled _Dream SMP._ SMP, something that the land adjacent to his home had been called, symbolic for the unexplored land. Just a race across the ocean, just a laugh as Tommy and Phil beat their family across, flying high above.

He killed the next person to bring it up in the coliseum. He did so efficiently and in a way he seldom does, refusing to play with his prey. 

_Blood,_ chanted the voices, _Blood for grief. Blood for fire._

No one can outrun their past forever, chided the voices. Six years after his brothers had left home, four years after his father had abandoned him, three years after he had been sold and left to die, Tommy heard someone speak of _Technoblade._

The name was like ash in his ears when the person said it. He heard it pass him in conversation, ringing in his ears like his tinnitus, developed from years of explosions. His wings had flared upward on reflex, nearly knocking into the person before him.

“What did you say?” He’d demanded, fist tightening on his trident. The person blinked at him, startled, and shrugged.

“I said Technoblade. Big time fighter outside 2b2t, years ago. He visited here once and slaughtered half an army with his brother. They’ve gotten themselves into a war, they have, with the Dream SMP.”

Tommy’s chest had gone hollow. The voices had stopped. For the first time since he realized his father was gone, his mind went utterly, and completely, silent. Technoblade. Technoblade and his brother.

“Does he have any other family?”

The other guy snorted like Tommy was pulling his leg, like he’d been some sort of _idiot,_ with his magically enchanted armor and weapons and massive wings and stores of apples. With the blood in his veins and the black in his eyes. He dared to laugh, even, at the twisted expression on his face. “You think a psychopath like that’s gonna have a family _?_ No. He rolls alone.”

Tommy burned. The Phoenix killed. _Blood blood blood_ chanted the voices. _Where’s dad? Where’s Techno? Where’s Wilbur? What happened?_

He searched through the world first. He never expected to gain much info beyond the basic facts — people cut up on the wire are cagey, even more so when faced with a legend, and it took stacks of valuable resources to even get a word uttered from most. When obsidian bridges and threats didn’t seem to do enough, he moved on to the forums, trying to convince himself he didn’t care what was happening, he only wanted to know what parts of his world he should avoid. He doesn’t think of Techno and Wilbur, and their promise to bring Tommy with them as soon as he was old enough. _Blood blood blood careful careful where Techno? Where’s Wilbur?_

The forums brought more news. They’d been a system of interconnected communicators, allowing one to chat with anyone you wanted, so long as you found the right address. It had been bloody dangerous, though, seeing as coordinates were as easy as breathing to leak and scam-forums might blow up in your face. _Literally,_ with all of the shrapnel and fire that whoever it that’s just duped you could afford to send. But Tommy rarely had to worry about that by the time it really mattered — he could just fly off, and he had more than enough materials to keep himself alive against a small _army —_ so he connected with as many people as he can, ravenously searching for info between battles and wars. 

_Violent and overprotective,_ said some. _Cautious. Artistic,_ said others, and Tommy, for all his years spent forgetting his brothers, could easily guess which they’d been talking about. _They’ve started a nation. They’ve started a war. They’ve waged a battle they cannot win._

_(Blood blood blood their blood his blood take blood your blood blood blood blood.)_

Then, after months of no news:

_They’d lost._

Tommy hadn’t been able to tell whether he’d been excited to hear of their demise or not at the time. The voices had set him straight — he’d been just as terrified as he had been for years.. He’d been horrified. He wanted his _family._ But he hadn’t listened to them singing, and he’d burned. 

By the time their country — L’Manberg, apparently — and its request for backup hit 2b2t, Tommy had not existed for a long time. His name had been lost, only remembered by those who had somehow lived through all his years, knowing him only as a child on the side of an obsidian highway with bright and fiery wings, only just molted. He had become Phoenix and Phoenix alone, more than happy to leave his old life alone. He fought, gathered, lives, and breathed as the legend he had become. When he saw the forum post announcing L’Manberg’s imminent destruction, he’d laughed.

_Help help help blood blood blood._

The voices begged for his attention. They screamed and wormed their way into his every waking moment, his head twitching and hands twisting and eyes shuttering with the effort to hold back a scream. It all had come to a crescendo during one particularly brutal fight, where a call of _blood blood blood_ had nearly had him beheaded in his distraction. 

He decided a vacation might be nice. Just to make sure his head stayed firmly where it was. 

So, at fifteen years old, Tommy packed up his shulker boxes and tucked his things deep within chest after chest after chest. He buried spawn eggs, stacks of golden apples, broken things, misused things, shoving it all away while anyone he might be able to call a tentative ally had come out none the wiser. 

By the time the forums started to notice he's disappeared, Tommy was miles out. For the first time in several years, Phoenix had left the server. And for all of his fame and prestige, he was only another blip on the radar. 

He’s not sure how long he traveled, even later. It could have been weeks. It could have been _months._ It all blurred into each other, and he stopped trying to keep track around the two-week marker. Those pillagers must’ve passed him around several times, seeing as his journey was so expansive. His memories of his life before chaos became increasingly fuzzy, and he disregarded them in favor of thinking about his future.

Phoenix’s wings were nearly sixteen feet when completely unfurled. They were a shade of light, ash-colored brown at the top, drifting further and further into the unnatural red and yellow and orange at the bottom that earned him his name, waving in the wind in the same manner as flames. He had full netherite and weapons to match, his wings adding an extra layer of protection, seeing as he doesn’t need to remove his chestplate to wear an elytra. His helmet was different than that of most standard sets, carved to perch across his entire face, covering his identity and his past in metal. More than once he’d slept with it on. It also came in handy when he’d needed to block an arrow to the nose, or change his voice, or deal with all the intricacies of conversation. He could be as annoying as he wanted, and a punch to the face will break his victim’s knuckles, not his skull.

He was utterly unrecognizable.

Scars littered his skin. He had managed to grow quite a bit in the past four years, bulking up and getting taller in a way he didn’t think his genes were made to do. He still looked like a child, of course, under the mask, but he planned to keep that _firmly_ in place if he was going to observe his siblings.

When he’d gotten back to his former home, his communicator started to beep. His old one, with unanswered messages sent to Phil, Techno, Wilbur, going ignored, had been destroyed two days into his stay at 2b2t. When he finally landed, atop a tree and posed to read the new messages, he’d been a bit startled. _Technoblade_ and _Wilbursoot_ flashed their confusion loudly, asking him why he’d come. Apparently, some asshole from 2b2thad told them of his interest. He groaned, and types something dismissive back, dropping down from the tree and deciding to walk. 

It took two days to find his way to their ravine hideout. Wilbur texted him quite obsessively, while Techno didn’t say anything past telling Tommy that Wilbur is wrong and “Pogtopia” sucks as a name for a country. Tommy never responded. Mostly because he’s offended, seeing as that name seems perfectly alright. Partly because it felt good to ignore them for a change.

—-

There’s something deeply angry in his chest when he finally enters their makeshift home. It’s comprised of one, single, spiraling staircase, marble and extravagant, leading down to two beds, a chest, and a crafting table. That’s _it._ Wilbur and Techno are back to back, silent, one playing a mournful song on his guitar and the other scribbling into a book, hair falling into the pages and long, boar-ears twitching. Tommy kicks a rock down and snickers when the younger of the two jerks up, Techno’s eyes already filled with cautious rage as he draws his sword. 

_“Who’s there?”_ He shouts, echoing up into the darkness with a force of rage behind it. Tommy’s eyes follow it into the sky, marveling in the wide expanse of stars overhead of him. They seem brighter than he has seen them in _years,_ not polluted by the light of a thousand explosions. There’s another shout from deep into the chasm in the earth, and Tommy’s eyes drop back down, stars abandoned. 

“Bitch,” Phoenix says in lieu of a warning, as he jumps down into the ravine and lands with flair. 

After Wilbur manages to stop Techno from gutting Tommy in an instant, and the boy himself has finished laughing hysterically, there’s a moment where they stand, silently sizing each other up. _Their_ expressions are that of scrutiny; _his_ of nothing, all of his emotions internal, all of them numbed. Though, he can’t stop his wings from shuffling as sudden discomfort hits him. They’ve aged. Wilbur’s hair has grown out, Techno’s too, plaited into matching braids. The pig-hybrid’s fangs have gotten much longer, curling up into a snarl when he opens his mouth. Wilbur’s hands shake, his eyes a manic sort of open. Techno’s hands are steady on their blade. His eyes are _dead._

(Later that night, Tommy cuts his hair. He can’t think about how much it hurts to have theirs match.)

“Didn’t expect someone from anarchy-land to want to help,” Techno says, interrupting the silence. 

Tommy puts on the worst accent he can, all flat and direct vowels, sharp and clipped. They don’t recognize him in the _slightest._ It seems his facade is convincing enough, and he feels a rush of adrenaline lance through him as he realizes his siblings _don’t know who he is._ He grins beneath the mask. 

“I didn’t expect it either.” 

Wilbur frowns, hands coming up to rub at his arms in the midnight cold, a bit of frost whisping up from his lips. “So why did you?”

The voices ask for truth. The voices ask for forgiveness. Tommy let out a laugh, both at their presumptiveness and his own mirth. “Outta the goodness of my _heart.”_

He helps them assemble a fire in the middle of their cleaned-out hovel. Both of them blink as he tosses a fire charge at it, clearly surprised at his resources. It makes him wonder how long they’ve been here, starving, their only source of warmth the other’s back. It makes him wonder why he _cares._

They _really_ blink when he pulls out a shulker box, though, and his annoyed confusion is lost momentarily. He lets out a full-blown laugh when Wilbur’s jaw drops open, cackling to himself in a way he knows is a bit mean. But they don’t question it, and he starts to rummage about, already catching himself deciding which armor his brothers would like, wondering what weapons they’ve grown to favor.

Well. There’s time to discover all that later.

That first night passes awkwardly. Tommy is without a bed, refusing to sleep, set his spawn, or acknowledge anyone around. Neither Wilbur nor Techno trust him, and he _knows it,_ because they don’t sleep either, breathing slow and even but not quite deep enough. Tommy just shrugs into the darkness, picking at his feathers and his newly shaved head. There will be time to prove himself later. That is- if he doesn’t decide to kill them.

(He's still mulling it over. His brothers are liars. They abandoned him and his father and everything he thought they’d loved. Tommy has spent far too much time in chaos and anarchy incarnate to ever want to trust them again. He has lived a thousand lives and died a thousand times more, and he does not intend to do so again.)

_Blood blood blood blood is thicker blood is thicker-_

For the first weeks, his job “helping” his two siblings is making a cow farm. It pisses them off, he knows, that their prestigious and powerful recruit just stands around coaxing cows down increasingly dangerous stairways all day, waving wheat around and cooing at them. He can tell that the two of them are angry — oddly enough, Wilbur more so than Techno — but he waits. And, when there is no attempt on his life, he strikes.

“Take it,” he says, tossing a sword at Techno. The pig hybrid catches it by the handle in an instant, brandishing it in his confusion. The netherite glows with powerful enchantments, rippling blue and purple and obsidian black. His eyes widen, his jaw tightening with the force of a sudden grin striking his teeth. 

“And this,” Tommy says, a weapon of similar caliber going down at Wilbur’s feet. The man startles the same as his brother, then looks down, starting to grin maniacally at the colors that shift as he lifts it. “If you’re good, I’ll even give you armor.” Then, for good measure, and because he doesn’t want them getting _too_ comfortable:

“Bitch.”

They're good. It’s odd. Tommy ignores the terrible, terrible ache in his chest, observing his brothers and their oh-so-familiar tendencies. Others join their ranks soon enough, distracting him and the voices as he starts handing off more materials. There’s Niki, soft and kind, with clothes completely unfitting for a warrior and hair dizzying strands grown out almost as long as Techno and Wil’s, but wielding a bow? More than a killer. Better than some hands he's fought with in 2b2t. Better than _most._ Then comes Ponk, outfitted with armor before weapons, truly more a doctor than a fighter. 

Something awful and tight howls in his chest when he meets Fundy. The resemblance between Wilbur and the boy is immediately noticeable, round eyes and floppy hair, his orange ears twitching at every emotion, the same way Tommy’s brother can’t conceal a smile for his life. 

Tommy doesn’t give anything to Fundy. He doesn’t think he deserves it. If Wilbur had given him and Phil up for a new family, he doesn’t want anything to do with them. 

(Fundy is kind. Funny. A sweet kid. Tommy can almost understand why Wilbur left.)

And things _happen._ He’s happy, almost, to sew the seeds of anarchy and anger into the people he's meant to be helping. He feeds them materials and he jokes with them, dark and very much suspicious. Techno has not let his guard down in the slightest. Wilbur seems to not care about loyalty any longer. He doesn’t even play his _guitar._ He’s frantic, his eyes bloodshot, and when Tommy tries to figure out what has happened since he was abandoned, Wilbur immediately acts as if he’s just put a knife through his ribs.

“It’s none of your _business,”_ he grits out, slamming the hilt of his sword to the table. The sword Tommy had _given him,_ that he’d thanked his new ally profusely for. “I don’t even _know you.”_

“Al _right,”_ Tommy says, hands coming up in (conditional) surrender. He’d turns on his heel and tries to ignore the pang of worried disappointment within him. _Blood blood blood oh that’s crazy-_ “Keep your secrets.”

It’s only a few days later when his communicator beeps with the telltale signs of a new contact, when he’s sitting next to Wilbur, watching him carve into the wood below them. Tommy frowns, looking up from his scribbled battle plan (all it says is “blow someone up” and “make Technoblade plan”) to his communicator, sitting across from him. Wilbur eyes it, raises his eyebrow and goes back to sharpening his sword.

When Phoenix looks down, the name he sees tugs at his mouth, drawing a frown in the cracks of his lips. _Dream_ is outlined in yellow, only one message having been sent so far, but no less powerful an impact. He remembers talk of an endless face and an endless war. His wings ruffle out behind him.

“What’s peeving you?” Says Wilbur out of the blue. Tommy hadn’t even realized he’d stopped carving his blade, setting it gently on the wood to look upward, smiling fondly. At Tommy’s confused stare, he raises a hand, gesturing at the boy’s wings with a nostalgic twitch of the eyes. He looks less anxious than usual, and Tommy turns to his feathers, not seeing anything to indicate why. Wilbur chuckles. “My dad did the same thing with his wings when he got nervous.”

The rage that hits is sudden. It smacks into him, erasing all happiness he might’ve felt at Wilbur’s docile mood. He stands and rips his communicator off the table, leering down at the boy for several seconds before he trusts himself enough to speak. Because Tommy _remembers._ He _remembers_ watching his father rearrange his feathers in anxiety, shuffling his great appendages. He remembers adopting the habit as he’d gotten older, a weakness, something to _expose him_.

“Oh?” He replies, sneering. “Oh? And did your _brother?”_

Tommy stomps out of the room before the man can answer. 

The message sent from the SMP’s leader ends up being about meeting up. Apparently, Dream wants to ask him something, congratulate him on his decent job aiding the citizens of Pogtopia. Tommy doesn’t need the voices to know that Dream is a bastard. Creepy and weird and altogether _seedy._ He wouldn’t be surprised if his old cabin had been demolished by now, knowing what he does of the man’s past violence. He's sure the garden hasn’t grown back. 

But he goes anyways. If there’s anything he knows, it’s that it’s best to discover what sort of stupid asshole you’re _working with_ before you add them to your extensive kill list. Wilbur calls after him once, voice almost _nervous,_ but Tommy just spreads his wings and leaps, dodging staircases and bridges as he exits the ravine. He's not unfamiliar to the wilderness in the slightest, but the open, starry night is still something he basks in, as _he_ leaves behind his family for once, casting about in circles to find the meeting place the man had laid out. 

_“Phoenix!”_

The voice rings out from below. There stands a large, marble building with a cross on the front, simply labeled _church,_ quotes around the word in clear, ironic, humor.. As he gets closer, he starts to understand that whoever built this place does _not_ believe in god. But he’s distracted only a moment before he can laugh, catching the sight of Dream and his long, green cloak, billowing in the wind and obscuring the shadows below it. 

He lands with a _whump,_ smacking into the dirt and brushing off his armor with gauntleted hands. 

“I see I’m in a similar company,” is the first thing Dream says, walking forward and chuckling. He gestures to his mask, and Tommy quite suddenly understands what the rumors of the man _always smiling_ meant. “Nice to finally meet you, Phoenix. You’ve got quite a reputation.”

Tommy does not take the offered hand to shake. Instead, he cocks his head, scratching at his leg lazily. He’d smacked it on a table during an argument with Technoblade earlier. He’d won the fight. It’s a satisfying pain. “Eh, sure, it’s just murder. S’ kinda- kinda boring after a while. What’s up, big man?”

Dream drops the hand a moment later. He shuffles at his hair, then drops that as well, hand coming to rest gently on his sword. “Just a matter of questions and rules. I didn’t whitelist you, you see, so I’m not _sure_ how you got into this area.” Dream starts walking as he talks, gesturing for Tommy to follow. He does, at a brisk pace, humming lightly. “Did someone else?”

“Nope.”

Dream almost stops walking at this. He turns back to Tommy, his disconcertingly sunny mask dipping in a confused nod. “Well, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of experience doing less than possible things back where you’ve come from, but-“

“Where I’ve come from?” Tommy snorts. “I’m standing in it.”

This time, Dream really does stop. There’s something silently confused about him, and something past it, delving into something much worse. Tommy doesn’t stop though, stepping forward and turning around until he faces Dream, mask to grinning mask. Only then does he continue, snorting once again at his own incredulity. “This land wasn’t always _yours,_ surely you- you must know that! Don’t tell me you just thought it was _up for the taking?”_

“...excuse me?” Dream steps closer. His tone exceeds no expectation, but it isn’t as pleasant anymore. “Phoenix, I don’t know what you’re implying-“

“I’m _implying,”_ he says, with gratuitous air quotes around the word, “that you aren’t the only dickhead who knows this place exists! Creative name making, by the way, SMP and your name _smushied_ together.” Tommy let out a laugh, his wings twitching gently in the evening wind, carefree. “Surely- _surely_ you didn’t think you were the only person to ever find this place?”

There’s a long moment’s quiet. There’s music, distant in the background, along with a drunk bray of a singer. Lights purple the sky with their energy, ruining the stars. The city isn’t a busy, large, or extravagant affair, but Tommy can see the foundations of one, just like the unbuilt ones thousands of miles into 2b2t. He remembers when the land here had been quiet, simple trees and lakes and forestry as far as the eye could see. He hadn’t come to it often, but vacations and day trips flood his mind when he really looks for them. _Beaches, Tommy, blood and beaches and sunshine and trees and blood and-_

He looks at Dream with eyes that remember a time before the man had come, and it’s clear that the admin is intrigued.

“Wings are not allowed on this server,” he snaps briskly, denying his own chance for civility. Tommy is more than experienced breaking flight rules, seeing as it was one of the only abilities that didn't work on 2b2t. “Ender materials aren’t either. Stop with the shulker boxes.”

With this, he lets out a snort. “No.” 

Tommy walks away, launching into the sky before Dream can glare.

Things continue on in the week as per normal. Tommy toys with his siblings. Tommy hands out rations. Tommy accidentally sets fire to the cow farm while playing with matches. Tommy gets sent out to go into L’Manberg and speak to some asshole named _Tubbo._ Which, besides maybe Technoblade, is the shittiest name he's ever heard.

The city is… odd, as soon as he arrives. It’s his first real observation of the place. There are people at the outskirts tearing down the remainders of the walls — a rare sight for Tommy, seeing as he's so accustomed to cobblestone pyramids and towers wherever he goes — looking at him with expressions of fear and panic both. So it seems his name has reached people here, too. _Big Tommy bloody Tommy firey Tommy blood blood blood-_

He takes pride in the faces he sees watching him. City streets are nearly empty as he stomps about through them, deciding to walk rather than fly as to observe the scenery. There are homes, parks, _science labs,_ etc, all scattered about in a childish hopscotch manner. By the time he gets to the White House, he’s rather tired of people staring jealously at his wings, though, and he flaps them angrily as he walks into the lobby.

It’s a rather impressive building. Inside and out, it shines with marble and stone, quite a bit of effort obviously imposed upon it. Before him are two staircases, converging into one doorway, below them all a statue of either a hotdog or a penis.

“Oi!” He shouts, hands cupped about the bottom of his mask as if around his mouth. The sound echoes off the walls in a pleasing manner, and he repeats it. “ _OI!_ Where’s that fuckin’ _tub guy?”_

It takes a moment for anything but his own words to return to him. Then, with a slam of a door and a large belch, someone comes crashing through to the foyer. 

“Wou- would’ja stop fuckin’ _shouting?”_

A man, with dark brown hair and mutton chops down the sides of his face, thick as a mane, drops forward, nearly tottering off the side of the railing. Long, thick, horns curl down his head, chipped on the sides. He wears a suit and carries a bottle, face twisted into a _nasty_ scowl.

A _familiar_ scowl.

Tommy takes a step forward just as Schlatt’s eyes widen, letting out a choked sort of noise. 

“Oh, you _motherfucker!”_ Shouts Tommy, right at the moment that Schlatt goes running back out the door, kicking it as he goes. Tommy takes no time dashing up the stairs and after him, roaring expletives as he chases after the actual _president? Since when was Schlatt the fucking president, especially of a nation built by Technoblade? By Wilbur?_

 _You lived in a server built on ruins,_ reason the voices. _You are built on blood. It’s not the weirdest thing to happen to you._

But the man only laughs, limping down the hallway and slamming into walls for support. Someone opens a door to see what the commotion is; it smashes into Tommy’s mask, shoving him to the ground with a _bang_ and an undignified noise when his wings go everywhere. 

“Haha, _suck it, birdy!”_ Schlatt starts running once again, Tommy too stunned to move for the moment. The person at the door — a dark-haired man, with olive skin and a ripped beanie on his head, also completely shirtless — looks at Schlatt, then at Tommy, then back at Schlatt, and lets out a laugh. 

“What the fuck did he do to get your feathers in a ruffle?” Asks the stranger. His eyes crinkle with mirth, his age clearly somewhere around Techno’s. The shirtlessness doesn’t help, either, showing muscles and scars just enough to indicate youthful recklessness, not yet faded. He shakes his head, leaning over and offering Tommy a hand, shaking it insistently. For a moment he’s not sure he really wants to accept. Then, he yanks it, leaping up and scurrying down the hallway with a force so great it nearly bowls the man over. _“Hey!”_ He shouts, but Tommy is already gone, tackling Schlatt to the floor with a huge _crack_ as the man’s bottle smashes on the ground. “Oh _fuck-“_

“You stupid _dick!”_ Tommy cries out, grabbing Schlatt by the back of his collar before he can start to crawl away. The man in question lets out a high-pitched groan and folds in on himself. Tommy sees what he’s aiming for a moment later, grabbing his wrist before he can run the jagged shard of glass through anything vulnerable. Tommy’s about to run that same broken piece right into Schlatt’s chest when someone tackles _him,_ a blur of brown hair and a “ _shit!”_ and a cry of anger. Tommy goes flying with the force of it, already reaching into his inventory for an end crystal should it be necessary. 

But when Tommy looks up, it’s not anyone dangerous. It’s just a _boy_ , mouth screwed into a scowl. He has horns just like Schlatt, and fluffy little ears poking out of his hair, streaks of blond through his brown hair. _“Don’t touch my President!”_

And well - Tommy’s frozen by that, eyes wide and wings curling at the edges, a comical look on his face.

He, later on, finds out that _this_ is Tubbo. Schlatt’s _son_ , apparently, because even though they look and act nothing alike, men like Schlatt can _somehow_ find someone to procreate with. The man who had just about broken his nose with a door is Quackity, Vice President, thankfully now wearing a shirt, a white button-down, though his tie is loose. 

Schlatt, years ago — and Tommy discovers he's apparently _Jschlatt,_ now, in an effort to disguise his identity, one extra letter tagged on — had stolen a hefty stash from Tommy when he’d passed through 2b2t. It’s not like it made a dent in his stash, but it _pissed him off._ Apparently, the hybrid used it all to buy himself a ridiculously extravagant house and not have to _sell his son?_ Jschlatt’s words, not Tommy’s, thought it’s said with a fond smile. Tommy, as someone who has been sold before, is less than pleased.

Then, ages later, he’d found his way into being president of L’Manberg. (Or was it Manberg now?) Tommy thinks it’s rather rude of Tubbo to be Wilbur and Techno’s friend just to reveal himself as their enemy’s _son,_ but he doesn’t voice this.

Later, when Quackity and Jschlatt have disappeared to _sober him up,_ he speaks to Tubbo alone. Once they get past the tackling and shouting, he’s actually genuinely pleasant, a nice mixture of rude and civil that really should function like oil and water, but works just fine. He insults Tommy’s intentions backhandedly, but not behind his back. He insinuates that Tommy has come to betray whoever he’s aligned with, then immediately becomes interested when his intentions become clear. And, in the end, and with not much argument, Tubbo agrees to be a double agent.

“Jschlatts going _crazy,”_ he murmurs. “He needs to be out of office, my dad or not.”

He sounds sad when he says it. As if it’s his fault. Tommy, who disliked fathers on principle, does his best to convince the boy otherwise. 

When Tommy reports back to Wilbur and Techno, his mood has improved significantly. Wilbur’s, apparently, has declined. He’s more paranoid and erratic than before, Fundy desperately trying to calm him as he waves his sword around and shouts at Techno about betrayal and dead countries. And Techno, for all of his anger and darkness and prowling, simply stands in his spot, then tugs Wilbur into a gentle, loose hold the moment the boy finishes his tirade. It works. 

It doesn’t stop a cartilage-deep ache from erupting in Tommy’s chest once again, his eyes growing heavy as he asks himself:

_Why not me?_

This act of care from brother to brother doesn’t seem to quell the madness, though. Wilbur comes to Tommy some nights later, waist-deep in midnight exhaustion, staggering forward on uneven steps. Tommy ignores the pang of worry within him, sneering at his brother’s destructive state even if he can’t see it behind his brother’s mask. He wonders, deep inside, if Wilbur’s voices are back. If that’s why he’s gone funny, the way he has. If they’re changed. If they’re _worse._

“Phoenix,” he murmurs, voice choked with tears. He looks _devastated._ Tommy has to stumble forward and catch him before he falls, leaning him over until he’s sitting on the dirt ground beneath them. Torchlight flickers from all around them, the orange highlighting all of the aging Tommy has missed his brother go through. Deep worry lines scour his forehead, a scar curving up and into his brow. The voices beg for him to do something to help. To smooth that furrow between Wilbur’s. nose and his eyes, with a joke or a smile or a hug. He ignores it all the same. “Phoenix, L’Manberg is _dead.”_

“Sure,” Tommy says, mouth dry, all too happy to keep his mask pressed in place. “S’ Manberg now, right?”

“No, no no _no-“_ babbles Wilbur, bringing a hand up to grip pathetically at his hair, knocking his beanie off. “I’ve lost- lost _everyone._ I can’t- can’t trust Techno.” He swallows audibly. “Can’t trust anyone. L’Manberg is _gone,_ Phoenix. My family is _gone._ I fucking _left them._ They left- no, they left _me.”_

“You left first,” Tommy whispers before it can be helped. Wilbur looks up through eyes shining starlight with tears.

“You look like him,” replies the man hollowly, wet splashing down his cheeks. “You have his wings.” Tommy feels extraordinarily alone. Then, as abruptly as he’d started to ramble, Wilbur moans. “Help me, please, Phoenix. Help me _destroy it all.”_

And Phoenix, too stunned to move, legs wobbling beneath him, wings _itching_ to move, to curl about his brother, nods.

Things go further and further off the deep end as time goes on. Techno is clearly getting more exhausted with taking care of his brother’s ailing mind and turns to be _angry._ He lashes out more often. He scoffs in the face of a chance for _recovery,_ a chance to _save_ his ruined nation. The two seem of alike minds, and Tommy is more than ok with letting them be. And so he helps where he can, burying the voices and burying his thoughts as he seems to dissociate into a state of _care._ He finds himself more and more worried on his sibling’s behalf. More anxious when they go out, more anxious when Tubbo comes into the base, tired and worn. He thinks it might be the voices taking over, for more often than not, they ask for him to _help._

(He's in denial. He misses his family. He misses his life. He misses, most of all, how it felt to feel more than a dull, disgusting, rage.)

_(Blood blood oh god please oh please blood-)_

He’s the one who first wires the TNT. He lays the initial bomb down, connecting it to a line of Redstone and back to Wilbur, grinning giddily at him. Tommy has no love for L’Manberg, their country that his brothers had abandoned him for, but even if he did… the smile on his brother’s face, the first genuine one in months, is the best thing Tommy has seen in years.

Then, the festival. 

It starts as normal as it can. Tommy lies belly-down on a rooftop high up in the sky, surveying the festivities as Wilbur and Techno hide on a building beneath him. Tubbo’s speech is well written and honestly, _nice to listen to,_ but Tommy doesn’t even want to consider the idea that Tubbo might be something like a friend. He doesn’t think he’d know a friend if it tackled him. Which Tubbo had, as the voices remind him, at their first meeting, so he’s being dense. He watches Jschlatt and Quackity stare at Tubbo, listening to his speech with indecipherable expressions. The audience is enraptured as well, all of them clearly excited to get on with the festivities but no less intrigued. Tommy’s feathers ripple in the wind, so high up where the oxygen is low and only an avian could enjoy. 

Then…

Then Jschlatt calls Tommy _down_ from his perch, his happy humming. He bellows Phoenix’s moniker with a doped-up grin on his face, waving a hand shaky with alcohol in upward. Tommy, confused — but less angry at Jschlatt day today, now, understanding his struggle — swoops down on fiery wings and relishes in the gasps of the people behind him, raising his sword in a salute with a grin that is all white teeth. 

Then Jschlatt starts placing barriers between his son and the outside world. Quackity’s eyes are wide and panicked. Words such as betrayal and revolution ring out.

Tommy is left with an ultimatum. He looks into Tubbo’s eyes and sees himself, thirteen, and waking up to realize his father will never try to save him again. He angles his sword toward Tubbo with trembling fingers as what he’s being forced to do hits him, and he is sure that his horror shows over the glowing netherite curve of his mask.

Obsidian shines the second he places it. Jschlatt is either too drunk or he’s grown too soft to recognize Tommy’s sudden change in tactic, purple glowing with the power of a miniature sun as Phoenix plants his shield into the concrete, covering Tubbo and him at once, and then shoots the End Crystal.

He’s up the instant it detonates. Tubbo is clearly not used to such forms of warfare, but Tommy, with his permanent tinnitus and itching scars and unhealed broken bones, is more than accustomed, tugging his friend up and around the quickly fading corpses of Jschlatt and Quackity as the two disappear, to be respawned soon enough. (They only leave corpses behind when they’re really dead. Tommy knows from experience.) He runs, even as citizens below him start to scream, Technoblade taking this moment to start shooting.

Tommy unfurls his wings and ignores Tubbo’s shout of terror as he launches them into the air, halfway down the podium steps but not caring to run any longer. It’s clear that Wilbur’s plan is being quickstarted, as Tommy looks about and finds the man nowhere to be found. His veins thrum with adrenaline. _Run run run,_ scream the voices, throbbing at his pulse, distracting him, his flight going lopsided. _Dad dad dad._

He wonders, for a moment, if the voices are as desperate to find comfort in his father as he is. His communicator beeps.

The world detonates into a white flash of light. 

_Blood blood blood get up-_

Tommy’s eyes drag open as he feels something beneath him go solid. There’s no longer air whistling at his back. For the first time since that day years ago, when he’d heard of his brother for the first time since he’d been abandoned by them entirely, the world is completely silent-

He looks up, finding that the air has erupted into flame and death as far as he can see-

Someone is standing over him, mouth moving rapidly, soundless-

Tubbo, eyes wide and leaking wet down onto Tommy’s chestplate, _screams,_ the first noise to return as Tommy finds that _oh,_ his body is broken.

One of his wings is twisted beneath his body, jagged white jutting up from feathers, taupe stained red-red-red, the same color of blood that had flown from him when he’d had his wings cut off, in 2b2t. They’d returned with his respawn. Now, as he finds himself lying in a newly created crater, Wilbur’s plan having _succeeded,_ he thinks it hurts much worse. 

_“Phoenix!”_ Screams Tubbo, voice shattering through the pulse of blood down Tommy’s ears. He turns his head dizzily and sits up, looking around at the battlefield around him. Bits of gore and rubble are strewn about, buildings catching fire and crashing apart, people screaming as they are consumed by rolling waves of smoke and _red._ Tubbo lurches forward and yanks Tommy into a hug so sudden, that had he not been stunned, he might’ve raised his sword in defense. But Tubbo starts to sob, and Tommy can’t feel anything by the pain in his wing, and the world is _gone._ He sits there.

People rush past them as they embrace, disregarding them as they all run to escape the flames. TNT that Tommy had helped to lie down still erupts in the distance, loud bangs that are accompanied by new rounds of screams every time they detonate. Tommy has seen destruction past wars, past hatred and blood. He has seen the world torn apart by the people who helped to build it. 

But this is his _brother._

(Songwriting, artistic, brother. Wilbur, with shaggy brown hair and a smile too wide to be any good. Wilbur, with his dark and stained jacket, beanie flopping as he walks. Wilbur, being carried up in the air, joining Tommy and his father on their daily flights.)

 _(Oh god,_ shout the voices, and Tommy thinks he might join them as well.)

Someone running past leans over and shouts something in Tubbo’s ear, a hand coming down and trying to pull him away from Phoenix. Tommy is still too stunned to move, and he thinks he might be going soft. Tubbo still clutches at his back, anyway, and he’s so pleasantly warm, where Tommy has been cold since his life fell apart at the hands of people who were no longer there-

 _“-Bbo-_ Tubbo! We need to go!” 

The voice registers as Quackity’s. He no longer seems frightened, or angry, or anything other than choking on dust and smog. Tommy looks up from where his head has rested on Tubbo’s shoulder, watching as tears run divots into the ash on Quackity’s face. “We need to _go!_ He’s here- he’s- he’s _back_ so we need to go-”

Tommy can hear Tubbo swallow, their chests pressed together. He coughs up dust. 

“Who?” Asks Tubbo, hoarse and raw and gritty. It sounds like he’s swallowed a bucket of nails.

_“Philza!”_

(Oh _please, no-)_

Someone is crying. Someone has tears running down their face, jaw stretching past it’s limit until something cracks, eyes wide as bloody ash runs into their lips, tasting for all their life, like anything they’ve ever eaten. Someone calls out for a merciless fool in the sky, God not ever answering, as they lurch, something in their chest going white and hot. 

There’s a first time for everything. Tommy thinks he dies with legitimacy that day, a little bit of him leaking out into that battlefield when he finds that his father has come back, years too late.

“Wh- what?” Says Tubbo frantically, eyes searching between Quackity and Tommy. But Tommy isn’t answering, standing, instead, reaching into his inventory with hands that want nothing more but to _kill kill kill blood blood blood abandon abandon abandon make them feel what you felt make them see make them make them make him-_

The one pair of elytra, the one he’d received all those years ago on an obsidian path with his hands torn apart with the blood of his nail beds, fits perfectly onto his back, the wings spreading and lying flush against his in a burst of beautiful flame. Tommy rolls away and onto his stomach on autopilot, ignoring the screams of surprise, pain, anger, terror, coming from all about. He’s up and running in another instant, ash falling like snow as the elytra give his broken wings just enough support to fly.

Dark, brown feathers encircle his vision. He feels the phantom grip of a hug, safe and warm and whole. He feels, for an instant, grief, so palpable it makes him scream again, for the first time out of an agonized _mourning._ It doesn’t take long to find the man he so detests, wings at their full span in the now exposed control room. He’s arguing with his child -- the one he’d let go, the one he’d never even _had_ to abandon -- something wavering in his hands, obscured behind his feathers.

Tommy can’t make out the final words spoken in that room. What he does hear, amongst the chaos, is the slide of a blade, and a sickening squelch. 

_(Blood blood please please oh- oh god- oh no- please- oh god NO-)_

Tommy’s chest rattles with the force of his own scream, wings collapsing under the vigor of his emotion. 

Phil must hear him, because he turns back, tears in his eyes and blood sprayed across his face. Wilbur is bent over in his arms, but Tommy can see the blade sunk into his heart, the blood starting to drip from his mouth. He thinks the noise that Phil makes, the horrible, wounded wail, the awful, awful stuttering way he sobs, the grief that unloads itself from him, must hurt, and Tommy _relishes_ in it.

His first sight of his father in four years. He has fought and been sold and been destroyed and been broken. Tommy is a Phoenix, one that desperately wishes its wings could not work, wishes its eyes had been torn out before it had been able to witness its brother’s death before the man even knew who he _was._

He hopes, when he slides his blade through his father’s ribs, the most loving things he thinks he has ever done, watching as Phil’s lips bubble up with blood and the smallest _“thank you,”_ that Techno is watching. 

It takes only a moment more to disappear. Phil’s body collapses across his son’s, the two intertwined before one of them can be respawned and the other cannot. Tommy raises the earth with his eyes, wide and filled with tears, forced to tip his mask up so he can vomit down onto the ground, seemingly miles below him. The force of his grief burns the land, as he reaches into his inventory and grabs five obsidian eggs.

The first ender dragon to spawn burns him to ash, body first. He thanks it as he goes, glad that his wings are left behind. 

\---

_(Blood blood bl-)_

When Tommy wakes up, his first thought is: _Oh, God, I’ve been sent back to 2b2t._ Then, a moment later, upon remembering the fact that he once actually had a spawn in the Dream SMP, before it had been named as such, he opens his eyes. Off-colored stone walls greet him, the dusty fabric of a bed he has not occupied since he was eleven beneath his hands.

He tries to speak. Tries to curse out the world for killing him and his brother and his father in a chain of events, that honestly? Might as well be his fault. Then he realizes that he can barely even gather his thoughts, voices, or no. They’re nearly silent, clearly appeased by the blood they’d been given in the past five minutes. He rolls onto his side, ignoring the fact that his wing is still broken, and pulls his communicator out of his pocket with shaking hands.

They’re all dead. Not a single person from the festival, it seems, has survived without at least one life down. Even Tubbo.

He can’t quite feel the guilt that hits at that particular loss. He’s unable to feel what he’d felt earlier, and he can’t feel the horror that fills him when he realizes he is back to be completely numb.

His bed sits just beneath the windows in his room. Moonlight sprawls across him. There are a few posters on his walls, varying from funny things from the nearby village’s funny news sections to a poem from Wilbur to a shitty drawing that Techno had made for his birthday. There’s an oak wood dresser sitting shoved into the corner of his room, a shirt or two still hanging out from where he’d shoved them before he left. 

There’s a lighter on the floor. He remembers rushing into Phil’s room and picking it up, dropped next to a candle that Tommy had bought him for his birthday, bringing it downstairs and setting the garden out front on fire. The potatoes had gone first; Techno’s favorite, their biggest offense. Then the carrots, then Wilbur’s flowers, then Phil’s apple tree, not far to the side.

He tries to crush it with his foot, only to realize his armor is gone.

Tommy curses, finding a new reason to leave his room. He’s been dreading it, the idea of going out and facing what he just _did_ bringing the taste of vomit right back to his lips. But most of his things will be in his enderchest -- _which Phil used to have --_ and so he enters the hallway, first with a lurch, then a run, feet tripping on the carpet as he runs into his father’s room. There it is, tucked between his dresser and his closet, a long-disintegrated flower sitting in long-evaporated water atop it. 

Suddenly his face feels too hot in the empty air, exposed for all to see. With an odd feeling, he realizes he hasn’t taken off his mask to do anything but eat since he’s gotten into the Dream SMP. Pogtopia was small quarters — _was was was why why why —_ and though he had found company there, his mask is the only thing he has been able to trust at any time in his life. That had never extended to his brothers. One of which will never see his face again. 

He thrusts a hand out and shoves the ancient vase on the enderchest away, breathing coming fast and terrified as he realizes just how vulnerable he is.

His netherite is gone, of course, when his vision clears past the foggy purple magic emanating from the chest. There are several shulker boxes that he’s sure have dozens more sets, but his chest is stuffed full of cotton and there is a sword in his hands and the voices are begging for him to _cut._

The diamond blade scatters across the ground as he rips a hunk of iron metal out of the box. Its metal clasps nestle into the buzzed surface of his hair, neatly cut off the day he entered the Dream SMP. Only then does his breathing start to even, a choked sob crawling out of his lips like a spider, spindly and traitorous.

Then, of course, because Tommy can never just fall to his knees and be childishly emotional in peace, Phil respawns in his bed with a gasp. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I gotta say, holy SHIT?? The reception to this story has been ASTRONOMICAL. I’m astonished to see it all! You’ve all been nothing but kind to me. So here’s the next chapter while I have the motivation and energy to post it. 
> 
> A couple of notes about the (kind of) untagged triggering content in this one:
> 
> Phil, in this chapter, is not actively trying to commit suicide. He is, though, definitely suicidal. He won’t take up the job on his own, mostly because he feels that Phoenix deserves to be able to do it. Recovery after the death of someone you love) or after what PHIL DID in the last chapter) is, as always, extremely complicated. Shove these two extremely traumatized assholes together and they will not coexist healthily. Things also get worse before they get better. 
> 
> AND MOST IMPORTANT THING: I made a reference of the Tommy of this story!!! It’s up on my tumblr right now. It’s a bit of a messy drawing, but I digress. [Phoenix Tommy](https://soupsword.tumblr.com/post/644744531944849408/tommy-from-my-fic-arsonists-lullaby-on-ao3)
> 
> Enjoy!

When Phil wakes up, he wishes he hadn’t.

His body aches with both grief and the soreness that his long, painful escape had given him. His wings feel like they’ve been snapped apart. He can still feel that stranger's blade, plunged between his ribs and his sternum. 

He gasps as he rockets up in bed to find a silver mask in front of him.

The figure jerks backward the moment Phil sees him, scurrying away across the worn brown rug on the stone floor of his room. It’s agonizing, to be here, he realizes, for the first time in nearly half a decade. He’d forgotten this was even where his spawn was. The iron-masked stranger -- the one who had very conveniently slaughtered Phil and apparently taken his home as his own -- glances between him and the Diamond blade on the floor.

Phil colors in the blanks. He nods. “You can do it again. I’ve only got one life left.”

The man stares. His mask shines, the rest of his armor gone, revealing heavily scarred arms wrapped in bandages, running beneath a simple off-red button-down. He’s wearing torn, bloody pants, a material more like burlap than fabric comprising their jagged figure. There’s a common theme through all of his limbs.  _ Blood.  _

Phil is reminded of the scream the man had let out, so anguished it sounded like  _ he’d  _ been the one dying when Wilbur had fallen. But that’s it -- a reminder. Phil can’t quite conceptualize the magnitude of what he has done yet, and he hopes the stranger kills him before it hits.

But with a shuffling of feathers and a whirl of his heel as he stands, the stranger plucks the sword off the ground, shoving it into the scabbard at his waist. He stalks out of the room on unsteady footsteps, and his hands shake at his sides. 

Phil wonders if the stranger is simply too angry to let him have the death he deserves. Somehow, despite the hurt in his chest, it makes sense. The greatest punishment for what he has done is to live with it, forced to understand that he had killed his son.

When Phil was younger, he’d lived in this house with children.

He resigns himself, now, to see what has happened in his absence. Standing up is an ordeal. His wings droop uncontrollably, and he can’t quite quell the urge to tear off his feathers. His hands itch to rip at them, but he occupies them instead with steadying himself against the wall. 

The first thing Wilbur had said to Phil when they had met up again, after all too many years of silence, was an apology. The second thing was that he was going to die. The third was the reasons he wanted to do so. Liberation. Rest. Hatred. And for the simple reason that he just wanted to see his youngest brother again.

(It’d been news to Phil, what had happened to his son. It had been news, until Wilbur, with clear eyes and shaking hands, had spoken of the garden, of the fire, and of the ashes of Phil’s son.)

He heads to  _ that  _ room first. The grief that hit him when Wilbur’s words became clear is nothing compared to how it feels to see the  _ evidence —  _ a lighter in the middle of the light red rug, a struggle pictured in the ransacked rooms, between four walls. When Phil had left behind his son, he had intended to come back in less than a day. He  _ had been  _ coming back, when the world had swallowed him, spitting him out into a terrible trap, where his life was on the line every second, every moment. He’d lived there for  _ Ender  _ knows how long, every God-damned moment begging the world to let him  _ go,  _ let him return to his son, alone, abandoned in their old and drafty house. 

Tommy’s posters are still hung up. His bed, the blankets thrown off, is unmade, old down feathers still sitting there, outlined in the dust. His dresser drawers are half-open, his closet door wrenched off the hinges. Phil feels his legs go weak, and he can’t quite stop the wheeze that he lets out, falling to the ground with a hand planted on his son’s bed. The fabric curls under the force of his fist, his head bowed. His wings, behind him, twitch upward, nearly hitting the ceiling as they flex their grief.

Something breaks downstairs. For a moment, Phil does nothing, content to sit and swallow down the awful hurt inside his chest, ready to die there by the bed.

Then, he stands, pulling Tommy’s cloak off the dresser as he goes. The light blue fabric only barely falls to his knees, but he tugs it around his neck like a shawl, jaw trembling as he stumbles out of the room and down the stairs.

When he makes it down the stairs, things are as unchanged as he left them. The living room, with chests shoved into the corner, is undisturbed. The kitchen has that musty smell of food that spoiled years ago and has since disintegrated. There are several cups and plates sitting around, where Tommy must’ve eaten, alone. The stranger is sitting at the table, body shivering, head in his hands. There’s a mug on the floor, and tea spreads where it’s broken, dropped or smashed; Phil doesn’t know. They look up when the wooden steps creak, face hidden but clearly exhibiting grief in his posture.

“If you’re going to be living in my house,” says Phil, with an exhausted tone, no energy left to question anything, “I’d like to know your name, mate.” 

The stranger’s mask rises to meet him. They face each other in silence for a moment. Then, in tandem, their wings twitch, clearly anxious. “Shut up.”

Phil nods wordlessly. The stranger curses. “No- no- not  _ you,”  _ he says, though his voice is venomous, like he’d wish Phil would stop talking anyways. “I’m Phoenix.” He clears his throat, one of his wings beating funny. “Surprised you haven’t heard of me.”

“Well,” Phil begins, taking another step forward, trying to see why the man’s wing is twitching, “I haven’t been around for a while.”

Then, Phoenix laughs dryly, as if he knows anything of the situation. It’s enough for Phil to bristle, but then Tommy’s cloak starts sliding off, and he makes a wounded noise, clasping the fabric tighter to his chest. Phoenix watches silently, as Phil finally steps into the open, a bloody hole at the chest of his clothes. He stares, as Phil leans over, picking up the three, large shards of ceramic on the floor, discarding them in the sink.

(Dirty dishes still sit there. Phil recognizes Tommy’s favorite cup amongst them. He shuts his eyes, gripping the counter.)

“You wings broken, isn’t it,” says Phil, not even turning to face Phoenix. There’s the sound of wings rustling, then a soft hiss. He looks over his shoulder to see jagged white bone peaking up from a sleeve of skin, red staining his feathers. It looks bad, but Phoenix just shrugs.

“M’ wings have been cut at before,” says the man, as nonchalant as anything. “I’ve learnt to deal with it.”

Phil’s own feathers curve inward to protect him at the implication, at the thought of losing his wings. Who  _ is  _ this man? Where did he come from, to have wings that could be cut and broken and ruined and taken and not even  _ flinch? _

He wants to ask, but he doesn’t. Instead, he leaves the room, drifting towards the bathroom. The door is unlocked, swinging open with a simple push of his hand. The bandages he’d stocked the bathroom with before he left haven’t been touched -- couldn’t have been, Tommy would’ve been burnt to ash, unable to wrap his wounds or call for his father, for those who weren’t there -- and he grabs them, along with a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Phil supposes, as he reenters the kitchen, that if he isn’t going to be killed anytime soon, he might as well start making apologies.

Phoenix flinches hard when Phil appears at his side. He raises his hands -- the bandages and alcohol within them -- in placation, nodding a purposeful nod at the broken rod of bone in Phoenix’s wing. The man looks behind him at the ruined limb. His neck seems to sag with the weight of his mask, and he nods.

It takes about fifteen minutes for Phil to wash the blood of the man’s feathers. He tucks the flickering appendage up against Phoenix’s back and ties it to his bare chest after he removes his shirt, showing a wide and impressive array of scars. They’re silent, as he works, binding the snapped and broken thing up to the equally as marred surface of Phoenix’s chest. The scars tell stories. There are long, angry red swaths of tightened flesh where burns have clearly erupted. Stretched out lines where blades have cut. Holes, jagged, where arrows pierce. Phil has his own array of scars, and so he does not ask. 

The first night in that house, Phil goes into Wilbur’s room, and he sleeps on the bed of the son he killed. He uses the boy’s cloak -- clearly outgrown, far too short, had he wanted to wear it before he died -- as a blanket, knees curled to his chest. He isn’t embarrassed to realize he cried himself to sleep when he wakes up, especially because he’s preoccupied with stifling a shout. Wilbur is in his arms, and there’s so much blood, and the blade pierces through the two of them at once-

_ Blood blood blood that’s your son stop- _

He loses his last meal, eaten two days ago, into the toilet down the hall. When someone walks past, shutting the door, ignoring Phil’s ragged breathing, he thanks them.

The next night he takes up Tommy’s room. He isn’t sure where Phoenix sleeps at this point, but he’s thankful for his absence, when he wakes up, feeling the taste of ashes in his mouth. He manages to swallow down his vomit this time, but he cries and does not rise from the bed the next day.

“I’m starting a garden.”

It’s the first thing Phoenix says to him in a full week. His wing is still tight to his chest, bandages newly wrapped. He’s wearing armor again, silver and shiny and unenchanted. His sword is absent. Even with the other man’s extensive defense, Phil does not hesitate to forbid it.

“No,” he rattles, breath sharp. He feels something awful mourning in his chest, and he doesn’t even care about self-preservation at this point, slamming his mug on the table. His son’s ashes lie in that garden, where fire and flowers and an old, lone, apple tree, had consumed him. “No, you aren’t.”

For a moment, he thinks Phoenix might kill him. Phil closes his eyes in appreciation.

But he’s left there alone a moment later. Phoenix walks out of the house and shrugs on a cloak, a sword coming from his inventory as he treks away, deep into the forest, deep into the snow.

The man doesn’t come back until the end of the week, carrying two deer and a line of hares, strung across his back. He is wordless as he skins the pelts, hanging the meat up to save. He is wordless, but Phil can see that he is just as dissociated as anyone else, his hands wavering at times, missing a stroke of the blade. He scrapes a long strip of his own skin off and doesn’t even notice, continuing on. Only when he finishes does he see the blood starting to trickle across his knuckles. Phil never comments.

The next time either of them talk to each other, Phil is at the end of a nightmare. The cusp of waking with a gasp and watching as Tommy and Wilbur burn in tandem. He rockets up in bed with a low groan, clutching his stomach as he doubles over, tasting bile. When he looks up, Phoenix is there, sitting on top of Phil’s dresser and digging through his enderchest. Phil wheezes, then makes to speak, ignoring the rawness of his throat.

“Wh- what are you doing?”

Phoenix looks up with a pause, his body language suggesting confusion rather than anger. 

“You’ve got the only enderchest.”

That just reminds Phil -- either he needs to go out for resources, or Phoenix needs to get it over with and kill him. He’s been too tired and demotivated to want to do anything but sleep and be cold, ache in his chest freezing over his entire body. But for now, he only watches as the man rummages through his items, slipping at least four shulker boxes into his inventory.

Phil had actually managed to get a few shulker boxes, back in his hellscape. He’d made quite the extensive base in The End, actually, but there was no love lost when he’d abandoned them. Finding that he could finally escape after nearly half a decade, he hadn’t hesitated to take only the things in his inventory and run across the border as quickly as he could. He knows -- a letter from someone named Dream had been on his front porch a few days ago -- that both flight and End items are banned in his land. Phil, as someone who was born in and raised in said land, had scoffed, using the letter as kindling.

But, when Phoenix pulls out a shulker box, a small, white  _ 64  _ floats just above it, indicating a full stack. Then  _ another,  _ as he shoves it into his inventory. There’s only one place he knows of where shulker boxes come so readily, and only one way of gaining this many. 2b2t and  _ killing.  _

“I never understood why people choose to go to 2b2t,” Phil says, not feeling particularly charitable as he realizes how many people must’ve died fo tose resources. He sumps over, massaging his temples in a moment of quiet. He looks back up as the enderchest shuts with an abrupt and angry  _ bang.  _

They stand there, facing each other, Phoenix’s hands still on top of the chest. They clench into fists. It’s a standoff, though there are no weapons, save for Phil’s lost expression and the way that Phoenix looks, as if he wishes desperately that he had his sword. 

“I didn’t.”

And with that Phoenix leaves, shutting the door with a slam that reminds Phil of explosions. The whole affair adds to his guilt, and he wallows in it a bit, remembering that 2b2t is not always a consensual experience. In a futile attempt at an apology, he goes downstairs, finding the broken mug he had placed in the sink. He glues it back together, the basic, blue ceramic fitting together well.

It disappears from the kitchen the next day. 

Things are painfully quiet. Phil’s communicator has been off since he was sucked into the hell world he’d been trapped in, and the next time he checks it, he finds it still refuses to boot up. So he sighs, resigning himself to the fact that he will need to go and get a new one. After about a week of avoiding the task he tugs on a real outfit — a light green button-down of sorts, with large sleeves that taper at the wrist, all the better to hide the lines on his wrist, indicating how many lives he has left. They’d appeared when he’d fallen into his hell-world — which he’s taken to calling Hardcore — with only one line. When he’d finally escaped, there had been two. Now, there is one. 

As per habit, he tugs Tommy’s cloak on first. Then Wilbur’s, covering the first like a hug. His own goes on last, all three tied together and making him look quite a bit taller than he is. It’s a bit top-heavy, but he heads out into the morning snow regardless, long, leather boots crunching in the white. He pities Phoenix and the man’s broken wing as he takes to the skies, feeling the wind hit his face for the first time in weeks. Then he remembers how little he deserves to fly and his pity swerves into guilt.

The flight to his son’s city doesn’t take long. L’Manberg, as Wilbur had called it -- and as he’d heard it screamed when the explosions started -- is still smoke and rubble. But whoever it is that has decided to rebuild is diligent, craters already being filled and small tents scattered about. People mill around like ants, and he ignores the glare of the sun in his eyes as he realizes that most of them have stopped to look at  _ him.  _ Shame and anxiety at the attention flood him so hard he nearly plants into a building, the idea that all of them know of his actions hitting him like a brick. 

He lands on the outskirts of the town, standing on a vacant hill just high enough to not attract attention. It fails. Below him, people stare. He walks down and ignores their eyes. He doesn’t know any of them, anyways, his last experiences with this land either during a vacation with his sons or killing one of them, years later. Soon enough, though, he finds what looks like a makeshift headquarters tent, larger than the rest, and with a large pink, blue, white and yellow flag. He can see touches of both his sons in the fabric -- Wilbur’s obsession with blue, the yellow that he’d once adorned his cloak. Techno’s permanently pink hair.

Phil isn’t sure if anyone’s inside, at first. But he heard hushed voices a moment later, discussing something that sounds like an intrusion to hear. So he turns, grimacing at the lack of door and his own awkwardness, fostered after years of no real human content. He knocks instead at a large metal pole keeping the tent up, his fist stuttering halfway through as he realizes the absurdity of knocking on a  _ tent.  _ But someone answers regardless, with fluffy brown hair tied up in knots, face twisted in a frown. 

The boy -- he’s just a  _ boy,  _ Tommy would’ve been his age, Christ almighty how many children are government officials here -- looks at Phil and his eyes widen. It only take a second for his face to go as pale as the ash outside, the blue beneath his eyes going sharp and dark against frightened white. Then, before Phil can talk, he dodges back inside the tent, flap closing and voice whispering something hurried to the other occupant within. Phil doesn’t catch who runs out the back, but they do so in a hurry. A cloak flutters in the wind behind them, and the boy reappears. 

“...Hi.”

The kid flinches. “Er- yeah! Hi! You- you’re Philza, right?” 

The man in question nods his assent, wings twitching outward at his back, now buried within the folds on the many cloaks atop his spine. The voices, for as much of murmurs as they’ve been of late, scream  _ wrong wrong wrong,  _ and he tries to ignore the way the boy reminds him horribly of his dead children, molded into one, brown fluffy hair and a lightly freckled face, tanned with energy and sun. 

“W- well what can we do for you, Phil?” asks the boy, voice coming back stronger as the ashen tone falls from his skin. He straightens out, brushing nonexistent dust off the front of his suit, torn and tattered as it is. He looks like a little kid playing dress up in an outfit he found in the dump. “You- you’re not wanting to become a citizen, are you?”

Phil tries not to flinch at the warning tone in his voice, but he knows it’s fair. He has, after all, killed their president, aiding in the destruction of their home. So he shakes his head, knowing that whether he had wanted to or not, he’d never be granted his wish. “No- erm. I just needed to know where I could replace my communicator,” he replies lamely. “My old one broke when- when I got sent into a trapped world, about… five? Years ago, now?” 

He’s not sure what posseses him to ramble on about his situation. Misplaced guilt, perhaps. Explaining why he’d abandoned his children to someone who almost looks like them, since the two that need to hear his words most are both dead. The boy seems to understand, though, because about five minutes later, Phil’s got a shiny new communicator on his belt. It’s clear Tubbo — an odd name, but the one provided — has only been so efficient as to rid his country of Phil faster. He says no goodbye, uses no niceties. Phil himself supposes he’s the only one to blame, really. He’d killed his son. Their friend. Their leader. Their brother.

He takes off into the sky and ignores the way the air above doesn’t feel like nearly enough. 

When he gets home, Phoenix is nowhere to be seen.

His communicator receives not a single message in the next few hours. He does, though, find a way to access the messages sent to his  _ old _ communicator. He loads them up and looks through his memories, finding petty arguments and loving, little things, sent by his children, photos and emoticons and experimental lyrics from his eldest. There are quotes from Techno’s favorite books. News of Tommy’s adventures, taking him to “foreign lands” such as a few trees deep into the forest. 

Then he scrolls to the bottom of his youngest son’s. He sees how the boy had begged for him to come home, in the end. How he’d been frantic, sending hundreds of messages in minutes, every  _ moment _ . They’re messily scripted and a testament to a frightened child. 

(The last one is nearly incomprehensible. The only word he can make out is fire, and then the messages stop.)

He falls asleep, spread out on Tommy’s rug, wings fluttering in the wind of the open window. He mourns and he grieves and he  _ hates,  _ both himself and a world who had taken him from his sons so terribly. 

That night, he makes the unfortunate discovery that Phoenix sleepwalks. 

He wakes up (with a gasp and a searing heat on his face,  _ flames flames flames  _ roar the voices) to a glowing, purple crystal, bobbing on the floor beside him. There’s a sizable chunk of obsidian sustaining it, Phoenix standing above it, swaying, his breathing rough and harsh. His body is completely stripped of armor, his mask the only thing left. Phil is hit with the sudden realization that the man must sleep in it. 

“Mate?” muebles Phil, leveraging himself up off of the floor, groaning at the pain in his back, in his wings, cold and stiff. The stiffness doesn’t fade even as his feathers flex, nearly going through the window as he leans back on his left arm, the other reaching out. He wonders for a moment if this is when the man has finally decided to kill him. Then-

_ Blood blood blood- _

Phoenix jerks backward. His hands come up in an instant to clutch at his head as a hoarse shout falls out of his mask, back hitting the dresser. His head comes next, slamming so hard into the wall it nearly leaves a dent. And, for all Phil’s indifference, he frowns, sitting fully up, disregarding the crystal in hopes that he can quell Phoenix’s… fit. 

“Woah- woah, hey-” Phil coaxes, raising his hands in placation. Phoenix’s fingernails start to go red as they crack, scraping up against his iron helmet so hard it looks like it might break. 

_ Blood blood blood blood blood- _

When the man runs from the room, Phil makes out two words, falling from his lips over and over.  _ “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m-” _

The next time he sees Phoenix, a week later, the end crystal having been disabled long ago, he has rope burns all along his wrists. The skin only barely peaks out from beneath the permanent bandages on the man’s wrist, but the red is raw, blood vessels burst. Phil has a sneaking suspicion Phoenix hasn’t stopped sleepwalking without a barrier with which to prevent it.

“Those Crystals… they’re from-“ Phil cuts himself off. He has learned not to mention 2b2t in its full name around Phoenix, lest he wants steely silent and a glare to his back. He rearranged his words with a sigh, fingers clutching the cup in his hands. “Did you get the crystals back there?”

Phoenix, staring blankly down into a sink full of dishes that have been there for years and that neither of them dare yet disturb, nods. “Crystal pvp,” he grinds out, voice carefully nonviolent. “I had a dream I was blowing someone up. Bits of- of brain and shit everywhere.”

Phil doesn't need to ask who it was that he'd been dreaming about. Phoenix leaves the room before his mug can shatter between his hands.

Phil goes to sleep that night, and he cries. It’s routine. Comforting.

By the time Phoenix’s wings heal, they’ve been living with each other for about three months. The only reason it hasn’t healed earlier is surrounded by circumstances Phoenix refuses to explain. All Phil knows is that he’d been awoken by a huge crash outside his window about a week before it should have been fine, and Phoenix had trailed into the house a few minutes later, limping heavily, wing dragging behind him. At the time, when Phil started to stand— intending to get the very same bandages and alcohol as before— Phoenix had just shaken his head.

But his wings still heal, slowly, steadily. The voices are more than enough to bring intrusive thoughts of the time Phil’s own wings had broken, tumbling down a hill and breaking the two in half while he was in his first year of Hardcore. Phil comes downstairs ones day to see Phoenix, bent over on the ground, fingers — lithe and thin and scarred, oddly skeletal for such a trained swordsman — passing through his feathers as he preens the ragged things. 

(For a moment Phil sees his son, wishing so desperately he could run his hands through those feathers, hear Tommy giggle at the sensation just one more time.)

He goes back upstairs.

About an hour after hearing the man leave to flex his wings, he hears Phoenix drag himself up the stairs. He’s gasping, throat shredded and echoing down the empty hallway. When Phil leaves Tommy’s room to see what has happened, he sees that puddles of snow have already begun to melt, trailing up the stairs and down into the final room in the hall, leading into the bathroom.

It smells like vomit the closer he gets. Phoenix’s wings obscure most of Phil’s view, sprawled out on the floor and filling up the doorway. His face is unmasked and Phil quickly averts his eyes—  _ look look look  _ beg the voices, but he has no desire — shutting the door just as Phoenix leans over to heave painfully into the porcelain once again. There is no answer. 

(There’s a cup of tea outside of Phil’s door an hour later. It’s cold, and half of it has been spilled down the stairs. He downs it, unable to clear the lump in his throat, angrily scrubbing at the wet in his eyes, with no clear cause.)

But then things start to change.

Phoenix is more and more exhausted every day. It’s as if his healing wing is a catalyst, his recklessness and clear instability mingling into a dangerous mixture. They start to run out of food -- and then the two of them just stop eating  _ entirely,  _ neither caring enough any longer to keep up with bodies they obviously no longer wish to sustain. Phoenix snaps more often, his wings unarmed, affronted things that raise every time Phil gets too close. There are tiny signs of aggression everywhere one can go. The front door, left open, from where Phoenix has re-entered. Mud tracked all over the floor, huge puddles that someone would have had to step in several times to create. Mugs and books and photos start to go missing, disappearing to wherever it is in the house Phoenix has taken up residence.

And Phil is too exhausted to care. He doesn’t eat. He sleeps. He doesn't eat. He observes, as Phoenix kicks over the bathroom trash can right in front of him. He doesn't eat. He sleeps. The voices chant  _ food food food hungry hungry hungry  _ and Phil shoves his stomach full of the vodka he’s had in the top cupboard of the kitchen since he turned twenty six, drowning out the voices. Late in the moonlight, past a time he usually falls asleep at — past a time he used to read to his children at — Phil watches a broad pair of wings outside the window as they sway in the moonlight, their back to the house as they carry something into the snow.

Phil looks closer. It’s a bundle of Tommy’s clothes.

He’s up and launching himself out of bed in an instant, seeing red. For the first time in a long time, the voices agree with him,  _ blood blood blood tear rip tear kill  _ screaming out as he careens down the stairs. He’s panicked and angry all at once, ripping a knife up from his boot, his sword having never returned to him after he’d left it in the chest of his son. (Phoenix’s had disappeared, too, but that’s inconsequential now.) 

Phil may be trying to coexist with Phoenix, but the blood rushes in his ears as he races out of the house, door cracking the concrete with the force of how hard he slams it open. His bare feet crunch into the old snow, frost tumbling out from his lips. The dizziness of malnutrition and dehydration is gone, overridden by rage and by sick, visceral panic. There’s already a bonfire lit, racing up into the sky, tendrils of red and smoke twisting, dancing in the middle of the garden that had consumed his son, practically begging for Phil to shove Phoenix into them and see if he really doesn’t burn. 

_ “Stop!”  _ he roars, just as Phoenix starts to shove the clothes forward. He turns a moment later, mask not showing any emotion when Phil tackles him down to the ground. The other man doesn’t move as Phil wrestles the fabric bundle out of his hands, panting, struggling not to scream. 

But then he raises the knife, red overtaking his vision,  _ blood blood blood-  _ and Phoenix dodges, rolling out of the way in a practiced movement, the silver blade instead planting into the dirt and snow.

Phil rips himself up off the ground in an instant, lurching towards his opponent while the thrill of blood reaches his ears. He can’t tell where feathers start and fire ends, as they dance, one dodging, the other with their knife, a frustrated growl rolling from him like thunder, animistic and unreal. 

“Why do you even  _ care!”  _ screams Phoenix, his voice so abrupt it nearly startles him. The masked figure shoves his bare arm out to knock Phil away. It’s barely effective, and the blade digs a gouge into his exposed skin where it lands. Phoenix doesn't even flinch. He takes another step away as Phil, fist twisting to catch him, dives. “It’s just fucking  _ memories!” _

“Those are my  _ son’s!”  _ Phil shouts back, undeterred. “Those are my sons- and- and I refuse to let you burn them, you sick fucking-”

“Oh- oh?” Then Phoenix lets out a laugh, cold and cruel and so awful it makes the hairs rise on Phil’s arm as he takes another swipe with his knife.

_ Blood blood kill-  _

“Oh, s’ that the one you killed? Or- or, Philza, was it the one you abandoned?  _ Which one did you favor, in the end?” _

_ None of them,  _ he wants to answer.  _ They were my sons, and I did nothing but love them all, and I did nothing but destroy them.  _ He wants to scream, to slice, to draw blood and find the yellow fat of his opponents insides, carve lines into pre-existing muscle, deep enough to cut through tendons and kill in an instant. He can’t tell where the voices start and he becomes, but he knows the steady rip and tear of his blade is of his own hand.  _ They were my sons, and they were my life. _

But then, Phoenix drops to the ground. At first Phil thinks he’s trying to dodge, then, too tired to continue, and a triumphant thrill goes through him. But Phoenix just leans over onto his knees, wings lying flat against the ground. He grips his own stomach as something guttural rips from his chest, not unlike the noise Phil’s blade had made as it slid through his son’s ribs, the robbing of breath. It startles him so badly Phil nearly drops the knife. 

What comes next brings Phil the intrusive impulse to look away. He doesn’t, as Phoenix’s hands, shaking and twitching, covered in scars, come up and yank his helmet off.

Blond, half-buzzed hair, flows out. It waves in tandem to the fire, streaks of white and silver cutting through it. In the midnight lighting, it looks almost purple. But Phil has no time for confusion -- and he takes both hands to his knife, less agile for sure, throwing all of his weight and all of his hatred into a single throw, plunging the blade, rippling with blood and purple enchantment, down onto Phoenix’s back.

Only to pause at the sound of a sob.

The man’s spine, poking up from the wing-hole in the back of his shirt, is shaking, his feathers as still as a corpse. His hands grip his face in a way that must hurt. 

_ Blood blood blood  _ scream the voices,  _ hurt hurt hurt  _ call the things in his head, and he almost listens. But he can’t help himself, pausing in his steps, feeling the numb chill set into the soles of his bare feet. There’s something graecian in the way they’re arranged. One a killer, the other the same, individually bent in prayer and ready to deliver the justice the other deserves. But Phil can’t help his own curiosity. He thinks, if anything, the face of the person he is tasked with executing deserves to be seen. 

Phil looks into Tommy’s eyes and collapses.

(He remembers his first day in Hardcore. He’d sprinted through the forest until his legs gave out in the darkness, screaming the name of his youngest son and begging whatever trap he’d fallen into to let him go, to let him find his  _ son.  _ Nothing but the whistling of wind and the low moan of something far deeper into the treeline than he had the energy to traverse. He’d stayed there, in foreign snow, in foreign trees, and he had wished he were dead.

He’d lived for his sons. He’d found, when he’d left, that it had not been enough.)

Someone is sobbing.

Phil’s eyes find awareness a moment after his ears, coming back from somewhere he didn’t know existed to find he has fallen to his knees. His mouth is only slightly ajar, frost flowing out, smoke flowing in. A face he hasn’t seen in years, the face of his son, dead, burnt in the same sort of fire that rages beside him now, lets out heavy and open-mouthed cries, his hands shaking where they grip his own arms.

The moment he registers the sensations around him, Phil launches himself forward, tackling his son. He pulls him to his chest and tucks his head to his shoulder, hands clutching desperately at the back of Tommy’s shirt. His wings encircle the two of them on instinct, brushing the feathers of his son’s wings. Tommy’s body ripples with muscle and scars, and he shakes with silent tears, leaning forward till his chest hits Phil’s. He accepts the hug without a move to reciprocate, chin sitting on Phil’s shoulders as the man lets out a broken wail. In a movement Phil hasn’t committed since his child was alive, he rocks his son, curling over his back as the boy’s head falls limply onto his father’s lap. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me at the end of writing this chapter: hm. 3000 words seems underwhelming seeing as the first chapter was over 10,000.
> 
> Me at the end of editing: ok maybe adding 3000 more words of edits is more than I needed to
> 
> -
> 
> Phil: mate please just kill me  
> Tommy: ?????????? What are you on about you fucking senior citizen. Anyways I want a salad 
> 
> Phil, mad that Tommy is trying to commit arson on his own clothes: I’m gonna fucking stab you  
> Tommy, kind of hoping for that to happen: come at me dickhead!  
> -  
> Phil, three seconds after trying to murder Tommy: oh oh oh oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god my son oh my god you’re my son oh my god-  
> Tommy: fine I won’t set my clothes on fire but you have to give me a hug


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Breathes heavily* *Spits up a hunk of clotted blood* *Unrolls piece of paper found in blood* *Reads Paper* 
> 
> "Hey, does anyone want a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2yiyqC8w9iK7MSN0x77B7a?si=6616cd935a1344d7) for this story?"
> 
> (Psst: click the link above if you want it)
> 
> Warnings for this chapter:  
> Tommy has what Phil decides is probably a panic attack. They also joke briefly about self-immolation.
> 
> Remember guys: recovery is NOT linear. Tommy and Phil aren't best buddy daddy son duo just cause they hugged and cried. Unfortunately. But I promise! Things are not dark forever. Hopefully, this chapter shows you all some of the light at the end of the tunnel.
> 
> Also last thing I promise: Someone asked if there was a specific place that would be best to send things if they or others ever wanted to make fanart. First off: I'd probably start sobbing if anyone ever made me some! Second off: My tumblr works just fine! Twitter is too scary for me, sorry.

Phil isn’t sure when he becomes aware of the numbness inside of him. 

For the first time in several years, his heart feels raw. It feels like a layer of scabbed skin has been peeled from his feelings, revealing all of the grief he has suppressed for years. Tommy -- Tommy, oh my God,  _ Tommy? --  _ is a heavy weight in his lap, atop his folded knees, their chests heaving in tandem as the two of them cry. Their arms clutch each other’s shoulders, their faces refusing to meet. They are aware of who they cling to, and that is enough. 

But oddly enough, he can still feel something cold, freezing him to the spot, like a frigid absence. Then it hits him -- he’s barefoot, dressed in thin pajamas, sitting in over two feet of snow. Tommy seems to realize the impact of that a moment after Phil, body stiffening as his wings brush up against Phil’s half-bare leg.

The boy --  _ Phil’s boy? Dadza? Dad? Dadza? His kid? Tommy? --  _ uncurls some, hiccuping, looking up at his father. His face is blotchy and mottled with red. Scars trace his skin, one side of his lips cut up into a smile, a broad stroke painted across the bridge of his nose, slightly crooked as if it hasn’t healed properly. There’s an unspoken, silent agreement, as Tommy rises from Phil’s lap, sliding back in the snow. 

The fire has gone out, as Phil’s son stands, struggling to lift himself. Phil tries to follow -- finds that now he  _ really  _ can’t feel his legs, panics a little -- then looks up to see Tommy, extending a hand. He won’t look Phil in the eyes as he helps the man up. They move into a half embrace, supporting each other as they half-stumble, limp, and jerk back towards the house. The clothes that had been sentenced to burn are sodden and abandoned on the ground, no longer important.

“Let me get the bandages,” rasps Phil, as they totter through the still-open front door. Tommy, silent, shakes his head, looking down. Phil follows his gaze, finding that at this point, he’s essentially being dragged inside, legs going purple. “They’re in my inventory.”

“We need to get warm,” Ph-  _ Tommy,  _ replies, voice just as hoarse with shouting. The unspoken  _ we need to get warm because you’re an idiot who couldn’t even handle putting your shoes on  _ stays silent. But Phil agrees, nodding toward the netherack lined fireplace in the living room. It only takes a brief strike of his knife before it lights. The heat is shocking, running piercing little fingers up the back of his spine and down his legs, and his son -- Phil’s  _ son -- _ slumps, clearly colder than he realizes. Both of them sink to the floor without a worry about dragging the other down with them, curling closer towards the flame. 

Then, Phil’s wings stretch out wide. On impulse, they move to curl about him and his son both. 

Tommy flinches

The rejection hits like a bucking horse, the impulsive movement of his wings stalling. Phil folds his feathers once again, trying to quell the disappointment in his gut. He leans back where he sits and tugs a ratty blanket off of the couch instead, lying it over the both of their legs. 

Tommy rolls the bandages up off his arm. It seems, without the slice currently adorning them --  _ you did that,  _ Phil reminds himself, sucking in a breath, hard, at the blood -- only scars and rope burn lie beneath. They criss-cross over his arm, up, up into his sleeve, which he rolls up to the elbow distractedly. His palms are flooded with an ocean of mottled skin, where explosions have clearly been set and fired too soon. 

“I’m  _ sorry,”  _ says Phil, but it escapes like a groan, not a word. Tommy just hums uncomfortably, watching as his father pulls a roll of clean bandages from his inventory. Then, there’s the bottle Phil’d drunk the night before, liquor sloshing hungrily within. He ignores the temptation and rolls his son’s wrist to the side. A shock runs through him at the contact, denied for so long. It has been  _ years  _ since anyone has touched him, the closest thing Phil has received to a hug the feeling of his son’s blade cleaving through his gut, digging up, up till his heartbeat stopped. It brings an unhealthy knot to his chest and wet to his eyes. He pours the alcohol over the wound and tries to ignore how his son stiffens, unable to stop the low, protective shushing noise that escapes him.

This makes Tommy snort, though, and Phil looks up from his curled-over position to see his son basked in orange flame, something like a smirk on his face. Phil smiles back. Tommy’s grin drops. It doesn’t turn to a snarl, though, and so the older man counts it as progress. 

He spends the next five minutes helping to clean the wound. Neither of them makes a move to get a cloth or anything else to help, so Phil takes the edge of his own cloak and presses it over the wound till the bleeding stops. Then, he bandages it, his fingers working deftly, quickly, as they press the white material over the gash. By the end, Tommy looks sufficiently shaken, his mouth trembling. Phil can’t tell whether it’s out of anger or fear.

Then, as if to distract himself: “Is it frostbite?”

Phil looks down at the blanket they’ve both crawled under. He lifts the edge -- and really, he’s surprised his hands aren’t numb -- and finds that while still not returned to their full feeling, his legs have begun to prickle with the heat, irritated at such a fast temperature change. He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. I’ll just warm myself up an’ I’ll be fine.”

“We’re b- both gonna freeze to death if we don’t change out of these clothes,” reasons Tommy with a sudden groan as he recognizes the chattering in his jaw.

“And you were just trying to set all of yours on fire, huh?” Phil lets out a soft chuckle at his own joke, but it’s more melancholy than anything. Tommy doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t pull back, either, just looking down at his wound, arm on Phil’s lap. “I’m sure you can fit anyone but Wilbur’s at this point.”

Tommy nods with a begrudging sigh, removing his arm from his father’s vicinity and stretching upward to stand. He leaves a moment later, trudging like each step takes a mountainous amount of energy. Phil closes his eyes and drifts. 

\---

There’s a panic attack caught in his throat. It jitters, making his hands bounce against his legs as he walks, making his tongue go dry and eyes go wet. His arm hurts. He thinks, that instead of the gash on his arm bringing him pain, it’s the idea that Phil had been the one to bandage it. To commit the act and try to fix it as well.

It reminds Tommy that his father still cannot be trusted.

He enters Techno’s room for the second time in a little over four months. He hasn’t dared disturb it, not willing to change anything, for the small hope that Techno might come back someday to do so himself. Tommy crushes that hope before its flame can light, though. He isn’t sure when he started becoming hopeful for a family again, but he does not intend to be so for long.

The room is the second largest in the house. On the walls are several world-maps, including an old, outdated one of the SMP as a whole. He’d always been the one to receive the most of Wilbur’s poetry, and he had clearly cherished it, hanging it up on the stone of his walls, slid in with the war and strategy books on his shelves. Tommy ignores it all and finds the dresser, pulling one of the dark-oak drawers open to find clothes, dusty and unused for years.

Tommy’d not taken any other outfit than the one on his back to the Dream Smp when he’d flown here. A stupid decision that he curses now. They smell musty and old, even though he’s washed them plenty of times. The clothes in the drawer don’t smell like Tommy’s brother -- a matter of small mercies -- but they don’t smell like blood and copper either, and he pulls a few oversized articles out. There’s a flouncy white button-down, and Tommy sheds his own, letting it fall to the ground. It’s only a matter of gripping the seam of his brother’s shirt now, splitting it open until he can slide his wings through. 

He doesn’t button the front. He pulls out a pair of soft, surprisingly high-quality pants from his brother’s dresser, marveling in the way that they actually almost fit him. He remembers a time where fitting Techno’s clothes had been a distant dream, every shirt a dress and every pair of pants a sack. But he strips out of his own sodden clothes and tugs the pants up, feeling an odd sense of relief as the burlap of his own pants disappears. Tommy stands a moment longer, relishing the feeling.

Then, he thinks of betrayal, and harsh words, and a brother who had left him alone, and he rummages through again. 

(He’s not sure why he feels a pang of awful, nauseating guilt when he almost leaves without getting clothes for his father. He’s not sure, even as the image of the man, fighting Tommy over something as simple as the clothes of his child, one he hadn’t known had still lived, flits across his eyes.)

Tommy retrieves a simple black shirt for Phil, ripping the seams in the same fashion as his own shirt, draping it over his shoulder. Then, taking a pair of pants -- and a blanket, as an afterthought -- he steps into the hall, his feet bare now that his shoes have been removed. His walk is confidently silent against the hardwood until he hits the stairs. As if a child, he trudges down, footsteps familiarly loud. Phil turns to look with a tired half-smile, brightening when he sees the clothes in Tommy’s arms.

_ Dad dad dad.  _

The voices, for once in a decade, sound as if they mourn a past they had helped to build.

“Those mine, m- mate?” Phil asks, voice stuttering with the chatter of his teeth. Tommy tries not to feel worried at that, and nods, rubbing at the back of his head self-consciously. He wants his mask.

“S Techno’s. Thought you might want something less…” He gestures at Phil’s general vicinity, starting to drip onto the ground, creating a puddle as sizable as the one now in Techno’s room. “Wet.”

A sad noise that might have been a chuckle at some point comes out of his father. Tommy offers no hand of aid as the man leans over, slowly curling his legs until he manages to bend his knees enough to stand, gripping the side of the fireplace shakily. He hands the clothes off in silence, eyes following Phil as the man walks toward the bathroom, stumbling as he goes.

“What have we gotten into?” Tommy whispers.  _ Blood blood blood,  _ the voices murmur back, but he has a feeling they’re speaking of blood untainted by violence, more of bonds. With nothing better to do, he sits, folding his arms and holding his face in his hands.  _ Behind you. _

Tommy looks up at the voice’s warning. Phil stands, shutting the bathroom door quietly, leaning heavily up against the wall. The clothes he’d been given nearly fit him, but he looks small anyways. For the first time since he’d seen the man again, Tommy realizes his father has actually, genuinely, aged. He’d never been a spring chicken, really, not agile like Wilbur nor vicious like Techno. He’d preferred to plot in the split-second between advances, slinking about like a snake. Watch his allies strike then follow in turn, ruthless and cutting. Phil had never been  _ openly  _ powerful, but he looks as weak as a sheep in the dim hallway light. 

“Oi,” Tommy calls. His father startles, whipping around as if he’s just had a knife thrown his way. And- oh, that’s new as well. It seems they’ve both grown far more paranoid through their years. It’s satisfying, in some way, to know that Tommy hasn’t been the only one to suffer. But Phil’s wings settle a moment later, a quizzical look to the tilt of his head. 

“Yeah, ‘m coming. Where’ve you been sleeping, then?”

“Basement,” says Tommy, a sufficiently one-worded response. But Phil, apparently, thinks the opposite, already continue his shambling walk back to the living room. 

“It’s fuckin’ freezing down there, Tommy,” he says. The soft tone of his voice sends Tommy into a full-bodied twitch. The older man averts his eyes guiltily, immediately recognizing his mistake. “Why didn’t you take your old room?”

This time, it’s Tommy’s turn to look away. He drops his head back to his hands, shrugging. “Hasn’t been my room for five something years now, Phil.”

The unspoken  _ “You also have a tendency to mourn a son you thought dead in there, Phil. It’s hard to sleep when your father is crying over you, Phil,”  _ stays silent between them. 

“Where-”

“Where  _ has  _ been?” Tommy finishes, lazily lifting his head. It takes more effort than he expects, and he drops Techno’s blanket to lighten his load. “I ran away a few weeks after you left. Started living off the land and the villages.” The voices rise in tone as the memory of that first slaughter reaches his mind. “Went a bit- brain went a bit mushy, and I got sold out to 2b2t.” He waves a hand flippantly, sluggish. “And I couldn’t get back out.”

Phil lets out a heavy breath, looking vaguely nauseous. It brings a guilty sense of pleasure to Tommy -- then anger. His father has  _ no  _ right to pity him. 

“Don’t- don’t look at me like that,” he replies, harsh and sharp and satisfying. Phil stands in the entry to the living room now, his face visible, screwed up in something unidentifiable.  _ Grief grief grief.  _ “I lived, Phil, no fuckin- no thanks to you. Got a hell-of-a lot of loot, too. And I’m back now, aren’t I?”

Phil, with his exhausted demeanor, enters the room with no permission. He sits back on the floor as Tommy watches him, warily, curling his legs into a crossed position before he hefts the thin blanket from the couch back over his shoulders. There’s something satisfying, about the way that Tommy looks down on his father as if he’s the one who has had the upper hand for all this time.

“I’m sorry.”

“No you’re not,” Tommy snaps back. Phil looks as if he’s been physically struck, but nods, accepting it all.  _ Stop stop stop  _ say the voices, but they’re quiet, with choked throats, mourning, slow. 

“You don’t have to accept m’ apology, Toms,” Phil says, with a voice like that of someone who knows they are going to die. (Whether Tommy has any intention to commit the act or not.) Tommy has heard this voice before. In the coliseum. Beneath his foot. Below his blade. Coming from his father, as he’d asked for someone he hadn’t recognized him to kill him, the moment he’d come back alive. “But you- I  _ need you to hear it.  _ I-  _ Ender,  _ I’ve been a shit father, but I  _ need you  _ to know that it wasn’t because of you.” 

Tommy’s voice comes out as more of a growl as he laughs, a cough ripping through him, his bones still not quite warm. “Oh-  _ sure,  _ it was Techno, wasn’t it? Or was it Wilbur? Seeing as- yknow, you fuckin’  _ murdered him.” _

Ah, charity abounds. Tommy feels no draw to mercy, not even when his father’s breath catching, his face going chalk-white, the only color to him his feathers, backlit in red, the fire behind him raging as deeply as their discussion. 

“Tommy, I didn’t want to leave you-”

“Oh? Oh but you- you still fucking  _ did-” _

Phil throws his hands up, blanket falling. “Not on purpose!”

“How do you abandon your son for years on  _ accident,”  _ Tommy says, rather hysterical, rage he hasn’t felt since he genuinely  _ cared  _ what his family members thought hitting him. “And then come back to murder another one?”

“Because I fell into a trap, Tommy!” Phil spits, angrier -- or is it more frightened? -- than Tommy thinks he has ever seen him. He’s begun to stand, legs bent beneath him, wings wrestling angrily for purchase in the air. Then, in one, solid breath, the fight seems to drain from the man, a gurgle of a cough splitting his lips. “I- I always told you and your brothers to stay away from anything- anything  _ suspicious,  _ and then I turned around and I did the exact thing I’d- I’d warned you all again.” He slumps back to his knees, mouth twitching in the silence. “I got trapped in a world that was exactly like this one but none of you were  _ there.”  _ Then, he rips up his sleeve, revealing the thin, black marker of Phil only having one life left. “I’m calling it a trap for a reason because I only had  _ one life _ . I- I just wanted to get back, but I  _ couldn’t,  _ not until Wilbur’s message -- the first thing to get to me in  _ years --  _ came clickin’ through my communicator, mate. I- I  _ couldn’t do anything.” _

The words of which Tommy wants to respond with catch in his throat. They sit there, like vomit, like something intruding, as he realizes he might’ve been all  _ wrong.  _

His father hadn’t abandoned him. He hadn’t even meant to  _ leave. _

_ You’ve spent all these years,  _ say the voices, chiding,  _ hating your father. You’ve wasted your life.  _

_ You’re foolish. _

His breath hitches. He hopes, against everything, that it’s a lie. He doesn’t want to believe it now, that he’d spent all of these years believing a lie, exhausting himself with hate and grief and bitter, bitter distress. It’s routine to want to hate, to do so precisely, a master of the craft.

“Tommy,” says his father, suddenly urgent, from miles away. From years away. Blonde hair flickers across Tommy’s vision. Someone stands above him. When had the room begun to move? “You need to breathe.”

_ “What?”  _ he wants to ask.  _ “Who are you?” _ Then, as only a rattling wheeze escapes him:  _ “Oh.” _

There’s a hand, deft fingers, long and thin, scratched with scars and rippling with veins, pressed up against Tommy’s chest. It rises and falls, fast and frantic, and he realizes it’s with his breathing.

“Match mine,” says his father, underwater, from behind feathers, choking. “You need to breathe.”

He wants to cry when he smells fire in the background. He isn’t sure what memory the scent elicits, but he finds himself breathing regardless, hard and fast and panicked. Someone else lets out a sigh of relief. The hand, thin and familiar and shaking, slightly, starts to retreat. Tommy bends over and takes the fingers in his own, clutching at the person’s hands as panic, loose and wild and disjointed, rolls about in his mind. It’s momentary and he knows it, but it  _ hurts,  _ worse than physical pain, more than anything. The hand freezes and Tommy understands, he  _ understands  _ that it cannot stay.

But it does regardless of his expectations, knuckles laced with age as they twist around to hold Tommy’s hand in turn. He lets out a shallow gasp and  _ sobs,  _ not for the first time that night, clutching the hand to the crook between his chest and his collarbones, where he can almost feel it against his heart.

_ You- you don’t- you- let go- blood blood blood- stop- liar- don’t- _

_ “I’m sorry,”  _ whispers a voice, not far away, not anymore — but still split by years, so unreal that it’s barely there. 

_ “Dad,”  _ chokes out his own voice, so painfully  _ weak.  _ But the hand doesn’t move, its thumb rolling over Tommy’s knuckles in a gesture of comfort that he can barely conceptualize.  _ “Hng-“ _

“S’ ok,” says the voice, and Tommy reasons it should be, if it comes from the person he thinks it does. “Just breathe.”

—-

When what Phil thinks is some sort of panic attack from his son finishes, he does not pull away.

He sits, crouched on the floor, legs cramping under the strain of his entire body. Tommy’s body seems to have failed him, bent over as if his spine collapses beneath the weight of his neck. Phil’s hand in his shakes, yes, but he does  _ not  _ pull away, letting his thumb drift automatically across his son’s knuckles.

“You back with me?” He asks, all earlier anger -- anger at being misunderstood, not at his son, not by a long shot, not when he’s only just got him  _ back  _ \-- forgotten. 

Tommy, in the middle of what sounds like a gasp and a laugh, nods, head shaking. A full-body shiver wracks the boy, and Phil abruptly realizes the two of them have both begun to prickle with gooseflesh again. He turns around -- hand still firmly around his boy’s -- and pulls the blanket off the floor. 

Both for his limb’s sake and Tommy’s, Phil is careful as he stands. He settles on the couch, careful to keep his wings from brushing Tommy’s, and tucks the blanket around the younger. 

He doesn’t mind suffering the cold. Tommy has suffered much more. 

“Uhm-“ Tommy starts, no acknowledgment of his own anxiety, but no move to retrieve his hand nonetheless. “Tell me. How it happened.” 

Phil, arm draped across Tommy’s lap, hand at the boy’s chest, lets out a sigh so heavy it makes his son, beside him, shift. 

“S’ not an interesting story, T-”

“I don’t care. Tell it anyways.”

There’s another pause. Phil feels something raw rumble about in his chest, loud and hot as thunder in a summer storm. He has never spoken his story out loud -- he has, in fact, truly deteriorated in speech. Years of complete and utter isolation will do it to a person.

“You know how I was going to search for a good sand temple, mhm?” Tommy nods.  _ Courage,  _ say the voices.  _ Have courage.  _ “I’d been traveling through the forest abou’a… Hm. Like, three hours, before I realized I’d forgotten a bag of things at home.”

Tommy stiffens, beside him. “I remember it. That old shitty sack of potion materials, eh? I-“ he swallows, Phil feeling the movement against his hand. It feels good, an acknowledgment this close that his son is still alive. “I burnt it.”

Phil just chuckles, thinking about how trivial his worry had been at the time. “Ay, I would’ve too. Anyways: I didn’t even get out of the trees before I had to turn back. And…”

He thinks back, trying to remember how it had felt when he’d fallen through the world and into another. “Everything sort of… lurched. M’ honestly not sure how well I can describe it. The trees all went flying, and I tipped over, and the ground was all far away and everything. I woke up, and it was dark out. I thought: hey, maybe I just… passed out? And so I headed back further toward the house. It wasn’t there. I did things that were less than graceful, spent about three days looking around, and then realized you were all just…  _ gone.” _

A pregnant pause ensues between breaths. Tommy’s hand, shaking still, starts to withdraw, and Phil drags his hand down his face the moment he has it back. He doesn’t know what to  _ do,  _ how to communicate to Tommy just how panicked he’d been, just how long he’d searched. He’s endlessly frustrated with his own words, not quite expelled, so used to being trapped inside that he can barely articulate them now.

“So you mean to say,” starts Tommy cautiously, his eyes distant. The grey-blue glazes over in the face of the fire, glowing orange in the moonlight. The stars outside are unfamiliar, ones he hasn’t seen in years. “That I could’ve  _ found you?” _

“No, I don’t think so.” Phil, with his now very empty hand, occupies himself in running his thinning fingers across his knees. “It was a very lonely world. Nothing else ever came back to me. I ended up moving up to the end portal instead of just waiting around. But no one else came, so I don’t think you’d’ve had any luck, Tommy.”

“How’d you leave, then?”

This draws a shrug from Phil’s sunken shoulders, a shrug and a wry smile. “I was wandering around in a cave. I was- er… about to die. From a baby zombie.”

There’s a splutter of a laugh. Phil glares.

“Hey, mate! There was a creeper and a spider, too. But then I heard my communicator beep. And…. I had not heard it do that since I got stuck! It just said  _ goodbye  _ with no source. A moment later I just sort of fucking  _ shoved  _ through the world, and I was back.”

There’s no need to detail the events coming after. Phil can still smell the copper, feel it between his teeth, under his nails. Coating his wings.

“Techno and Wilbur thought you died,” Phil says, after a long moment of silence. Tommy jolts, then folds over, his knees coming up to support his head. Phil doesn’t turn, eyes staring blankly into the jagged yellow flame, the netherack beneath it. “They came back one day an’ all they saw was the garden. They thought you’d been killed.”

“Not fuckin’ likely,” mutters Tommy, defeated sounded and low. “I ran off. Set the bloody potatoes on fire as I went.”

“Ah,” says Phil, nodding gratuitously. “I was wondering what that was about. Always thought you’d just been- you know, set on fire, or something.” 

Tommy barks out a laugh at his father’s dry tone. “No, absolutely fucking  _ not.  _ I’m not stupid enough to self immolate.”

“Mhm.”

The exasperated, exaggerated groan that Tommy lets out is more than satisfying for Phil. It’s been a long time since he’s heard it.

\---

“I dislike your tone.”

Technoblade looks up at Quackity with not a single ounce of concern. The man peers back from his place across the table. Ever since Phoenix’s timely summoning of several Ender Dragons, their interim president’s face has been heavily scarred, making him look even more annoyed than usual as Techno’s eyes bore into him. The one half of his head that was spared twitches down, clearly discontented. 

“You dislike a lot of things, Quackity.”

He scoffs. “I dislike those things for a reason,  _ Blade.  _ I’m only doing what has to be done.”

“Oh?” Techno raises an eyebrow, tucking his arms behind his back, resting gently on his brother’s ancient jacket. It’s the least formal thing he thinks he’s ever worn. He’s used to frills and velvet and dark slacks, all of high quality and reflecting the powers of the past. The worn, bloodstained and battered brown thing at his back is a far cry from his typical style, but it comforts him the most. His lips curl up in a snarl, lower fangs going with them. “Just like Jschlatt.”

“Don’t you fucking  _ dare-” _

Techno raises a hand and groans his annoyance. “You’ve gotta calm down, Mr. President. I only mean that putting a man on trial for committing  _ assisted  _ suicide is probably less useful than y’think it’ll be.”

“Philza killed your brother, and you forgive him this easily?” The bait in his words is clear. Quackity leans forward, resting his chin on his fists as his elbows bang against the table. He has a darkly satisfied look in his eyes as his opponent grits his teeth.

“Of course I don’t  _ forgive him,”  _ Techno snaps back. “But why don’t you let me handle it, since he was, as you’ve so intelligently noticed,  _ my brother.  _ My father, too, unless he’s done some sudden adoption, hm? No more of this dictatin’ my movements, Quality. This is a familial dispute.”

“Then what about Phoenix?” Quackity deadpans, slumping back in his seat. “You think we should let him blowing up our entire country and then, if I might note,  _ murdering your dad,  _ should go unpunished?”

Techno considers the idea, but only for a moment. (A long one.) He’s never had as much love for L’Manberg as his brother, preferring to work from the sidelines. His brother’s idea of government had always been a bit more powerful than Techno had enjoyed. But after Tommy had died and his father disappeared, things had changed. 

And so he agrees, nodding. “Obviously somethin’s gotta be done with Phoenix, Quackity, I’m not sittin’ here to be the court jester. But if you’re gonna give Phil a trial, at least give him a  _ chance.  _ None of that  _ already decided _ bullshit.” Then, a moment later, he adds: “And let me be there. If he tries to do anything funny, I’ll stop it short.”

He doesn’t want his father dead. (Yet.) There’s still nothing but the barest of familial attachment in Techno’s chest for the man. 

_ He left you, of course you’re mad,  _ say the voices in tandem, reasonable.  _ He left you. He left Wilbur. He left Tommy. _

He shakes the residual tones from his mind and looks back up at Quackity. The warped skin of his right side slacks downward, less tense as the man sighs. “Alright,” he says. “But if anything goes wrong I’m locking him up. No trial.”

Techno nods. “Sounds reasonable.”

The next ten minutes is a tense one. They go over defense strategies and their borders, what to do should Jschlatt and his small faction of allies manage to break through their walls. So far Dream and several other Dream SMP members have joined, along with Eret. Tubbo hasn’t quite articulated his side yet, but he manages to stay on a close enough line for Quackity to trust him, even with his ever growing paranoia.

Sometimes, Techno thinks the seat of L’Manberg is cursed. 

“And should Jschlatt attempt to derail the trial?” Asks Techno, nodding out the window to the tent encampment he knows lies just behind the wall. “He could try to collect either Philza or Phoenix for recruitment.”

“Oh, he won’t,” says Quackity, in a voice so nonchalant Techno knows it can’t bring anything good. “He won’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha. Me writing this chapter: Hm. I really want to make sure Tommy and Phil have some sort of Moment.  
> Me after writing The Moment: starts sobbing because oh god I need to stop projecting on Tommy 
> 
> \---
> 
> Tommy: Uh. Dad. Your legs look like mush.  
> Phil, barely standing: Oh my god you're my son
> 
> Tommy: I. I hated you for so long oh my god  
> Phil: Jesus fucking christ I cannot speak let's just hold hands or something
> 
> Technoblade: Quackity literally sniff my shit  
> Quackity: I'm going to feed your dad my shit.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My mind is turning to gruel these days, folks. This chapter is not a masterpiece, unfortunately, but I hope that it is enjoyable nonetheless!
> 
> A far more exciting development: I have fanart!! Booping_the_snoot (the same thing on tumblr but without the underscores) has drawn [a wonderful Tommy!](https://boopingthesnoot.tumblr.com/post/644935089653006336/soupsword-its-the-bird-boy-o-i-havent-touched) Thank you again, so so much!
> 
> Warnings for this one: They go hunting, so there is animal death and whatnot. And, something causes Tommy the urge to pull out his feathers. (He doesn't but he mentions it, so I'm mentioning it here just in case)

“I don’t think I’ve eaten for the past four days.”

Phil looks at Tommy with a withering expression, equal parts disgruntled and resigned. They’re posted up in the kitchen together, feeling significantly less weepy and murderous now that a few secrets have been spilled. Tommy leans against the table; Phil rummages through the cupboards, procuring a large box of dried vegetables and meats. There’s something foreignly domestic to it all and Tommy catches his breath before it can hitch, when he remembers just how long he’d hated the idea of this. The idea of family. Phil had abandoned him, and that had been enough for him, enough motivation for him to be angry, to keep going in 2b2t. In some little way, he thinks, hating his own father has kept him alive. It doesn’t quell the guilt inside him regardless.

When he’d woken up that morning, Tommy woke up sitting on the couch, surrounded by several more blankets than had been there the night before. Phil hadn’t been there -- and Tommy had almost gotten violent, realizing that of course, he’d still be  _ abandoned  _ \-- only for him to realize his father was cursing, off in the kitchen, organizing the dishes in the sink for washing. 

“Well, I’m staging an intervention for the two of us.” Phil plunks the wooden box onto the table, his expression souring. “Don’t suppose all Techno’s herbs have turned to dust yet?”

Tommy turns from his spot on the table and kicks a lower cabinet door to the side. Inside stand several rows of glass jars, labeled with things such as  _ turmeric, rosemary,  _ and, ever enigmatic,  _ blue.  _ He’d poured that into Wilbur’s cup one day when he was seven, and his brother’s tongue had been bright purple for a week. He shakes off the memory and searches, arms catching the very few herbs that don’t look entirely flattened.

Phil sees his hands, grimaces, and shakes his head, wings hitching up a bit. “Eh- we’d better go with it plain, hm? Unless you want blue steak. I know that’s the only way I used to get Wilbur to eat it.”

Tommy lets out a chuckle and drops the jars on the table regardless, not willing to go rummaging around and trying to sort them out. “Wilbur always was a bit of a pretentious cock, hm? Hm?”

“Aw, man,” says Phil, cursing lightly under his breath. He looks up into the cupboards and pulls them out some plates, head half-cocked. He seems unwilling to deign Tommy a response to his quip, but the boy doesn’t complain. Much. “Maybe I shoulda washed those bowls out for us.”

Tommy, getting a bit exasperated as hunger finally starts to creep into him -- he’s gone far longer than four days without eating -- yanks a particularly large stick of beef jerky out of the box, shoving it between his molars and eating it as if a boy starved. Which, really, he is. He’s reminded of this now as every bit of anxiety his stomach has been collecting erupts, and his hands grab for another stick of food without restraint.

“Wait- Tom’s, pace yourself.” Phil walks over and places a few gentle fingers over Tommy’s palm as he grabs for more. He’s clearly not stupid enough to try and steal food from someone who has spent the last years starving in an anarchy server. Tommy slows, hoping to show a modicum of awareness in his actions. “You eat so much after too long and you’ll just hurl it back up.”

Then, he reaches into the box himself, picking up a shriveled orange vegetable. “You should eat your greens, too. Nice growing boy you are.”

Tommy looks at him, his turn this time to share the withering look. (He picks up a carrot anyways, trying to pretend the voices make him do it.)

But then Phil picks up a piece of meat himself and immediately starts to scarf it down, and the two both devolve into reminding each other that neither of them enjoys puking. Tommy does his reminding quite a bit more aggressively than Phil, throwing small bits of carrot at his father and relishing the quiet  _ ow  _ he lets out every time. It is, again, oddly peaceful. He can’t seem to brace himself for it to fall apart. 

“Hey,” says Phil, though, in a voice endearingly careful. His eyes narrow, his mouth expelling a sigh. He’s stopped eating, setting a hunk of dried mutton on the table. “You’re thinking damn loud, Yknow?”

“Fuck off,” Tommy says, but there’s no bite to his words. But he’d be lying if he denied the claim. A hand through his hair, a bristle of his wings, and he shrugs. “Why’d you let me kill you, Phil?”

He thinks asking the question is some sort of self-sabotage. Phil’s whole body jerks so hard he nearly scatters the box of food in front of him, his breath sucking in so fast it sounds painful. Tommy winces, but quickly hides it, his eyes stuck to the ground. He can’t tell what his father’s expression is like, but he can assume it is nothing good. After a moment of silence -- Phil’s always been like that, letting out some sort of expletive or flinch before a long pause, where he calculates his words, decisive and careful -- he coughs, his hands coming down onto the table, just at the edge of Tommy’s peripheral vision.

“Because I deserved it,” he says, good-naturedly. “I’d just killed-“

“I didn’t just kill you because of Wilbur,” Tommy interrupts, “I was jealous.”

_ “Jealous?”  _ Splutters Phil, sounding more surprised than angry, thankfully. “Toms, what the hell were you  _ jealous  _ for?”

“I thought you only came back for Wilbur.” Tommy’s jaw does  _ not  _ tremble as he says it. His eyes don’t water, either, no matter what the voices try to convince him of. “I- I thought you just didn’t wanna come back when it was  _ me.  _ I would’ve- I think I would’ve given anything to be the one you killed when you killed Wilbur. And I was just so  _ angry-  _ but it- it was for no fucking  _ reason!” _

“You had  _ every right  _ to be angry, Tommy-“

“No!” He throws his hands up, wings bristling up, feathers puffed, looking more like bloodsoaked fur than the fire he’s so used to emulating. He just feels defeated now, less and less angry as the idea that he’d killed his father for, what, -- a sense of misguided  _ jealousy?  _ \-- sets in. “You got stuck in some hellscape in the same sorta way I did and I spent the entire time fucking  _ hating  _ you for it. Do you understand that, Phil?” He turns. His eyes are wide, his brow furrowed, as Phil’s face meets his, soft and accepting and not the least bit angry. “I  _ hated  _ you. I wanted all of you- you and Techno and Wilbur- I wouldn’t have  _ cared  _ if you lived or died!”

“You were-  _ are,  _ a traumatized kid, Tommy.” Phil’s voice is so effortlessly caring it  _ hurts.  _ Tommy sniffles, though he refuses to accept it, wiping his fist under his nose. It feels childish, especially after all of the discussion they’d had last night, to break down again. But Phil steps forward, closer to him, his wings straining to wrap around the two of them.  _ Dad dad dad.  _ But they stay in place, and Phil instead stretches a hand out to sit on top of Tommy’s still discarded on the table.  _ “I  _ was the start of our curse, kid. I know better than anyone how it feels to be guilty, especially for thoughts that are wrong, or not ours.”

There’s a long stretch of a moment in which there is nothing but silence. Tommy feels his father’s hand over his own, and he shuts his eyes. His relationship with touch has been strained since he was 11, a source of anxiety or hate at its safest and yearning or desperation at its most dangerous. Tommy can’t quite bring himself to feel safe when his father is touching him, but that’s normal. He hasn’t felt safe for a long, long time.

Then, out of the blue: “Is this because the meat was gross?”

Tommy looks at his father with a confused expression. The man sends him back a wry grin.

“Did we just start shoutin’ and shit because the steak was gross?”

It isn’t really a laugh that startles out of Tommy, but he does give his father a bit of a wheeze and a half-smile. He really,  _ really  _ wishes that things had never become the way they are. He would probably kill anyone (because death is a high price, now, in a world with only three lives) to return to his childhood. He’d kill then, too, if it meant keeping his family together, safe. These glimpses of the father he’d held in such high regard as a child make him feel if anything, just the smallest bit less hollow.

“I haven’t been hunting since that one time when  _ you  _ said I couldn’t start a garden. That’s your problem.”

“I think all of this  _ jerky  _ is putting us in a bad mood,” Phil retorts, ignoring his son’s snark. He doesn’t move till Tommy does, but sends him a pointed look, letting the boy pick his hand up from under his father’s first. Then he turns to the box and plucks it up off the table, shoving it deep into a cupboard and slapping the door shut with his hands. “I suppose it’d be my turn to hunt, hm?”

Tommy thinks back to the last time his father had hunted. He’d gone out with Technoblade at the ripe old age of fourteen, the two of them coming back bloodstained but with plenty of pelts and bodies to be cured and cooked. He’d coveted that position at his father’s side of years afterward, up until he’d gone out and hunted by himself, realizing that he  _ never  _ needed Phil to be able to kill. He had a bloody chant all of his own, the voices and his own grief so firey he could kill with precision.

Then, he looks at his father. A little bit older, cocked head and all, a quizzical, dopey expression on his face. 

“Or we could… go together.” Tommy throws a hand up, almost regretting the suggestion as soon as it leaves him. “We’d get more done faster. And you’ve got- got a  _ shit  _ taste in meat, man!”

Phil presses an affronted hand to his chest, wheezing. “You’ve wounded me. An old man. You’ve wounded me, mate.”

“Oh- oh yeah, fuck off,” says Tommy with a scowl. But he reaches into his inventory and pulls two swords out regardless. (He ignores the way Phil flinches, his eyes shuttering shut for a moment.) He hands one -- iron, he hasn’t touched diamond in a while -- to his father hilt side up, gesturing meaningfully. “I’m serious, asshole. 

Phil’s uneasy look is barely hidden by the time he takes the sword. Tommy feels a rush of anger through him -- then deflates, thinking about their less than charitable actions against each other the night before. He thinks the both of them deserve to be nervous, even if it still makes Tommy rolls his eyes once he’s turned around.

“I used to do these with Techno,” Phil says, sliding the blade into his own inventory. He lets out a soft noise, humming as his fingers tap along the table. “You know how he was. Violent. I never thought you’d ever want to participate.”

“A lot has changed,” says Tommy, pulling his own sword out. Without his leather belt at his waist, he has no place to store it, tossing it onto the couch in the living room instead. “Shall we?”

Phil nods, and they split.

Tommy doesn’t really want to try wringing melted snow out of his clothes yet. So he heads up into Techno’s room -- his clothes, when he enters, are still discarded on the floor -- and pulls the drawers open once again. The extravagance of his brother’s clothes makes him let out an actual laugh. There are ruffles and ties and lace abound, adorning collars and ending belts. 

He ends up pulling out something a bit more fancy than his tastes, but comfortable nonetheless. A simple white tunic, light red accents in the buttoned-cuffs, and the string that ties the collar. Simple black paints, the fabric of a belt still looped around them. He takes the long, thick, sash-like material and rips it in half with a snort. Both because he thinks it would be fun to see the look on his brother’s face if he could see Tommy now, and also because it is tits-up freezing outside, he fashions it around his neck in a scarf.

Tommy leans over and picks up his boots off the ground. The leather is stained with blood and starting to crack, but he tugs them up, zipping them on over his pants and nearly touching his knees. His belt and hilt are scattered a few feet away, and he tucks them just over his hips, careful not to accidentally loop his feathers into them. He’s made that mistake far too many times.

When he makes it back downstairs, Phil is already dressed for the cold, humming a tune that sounds, if nothing else, ancient. He’s dressed in the same, long black buttoned tunic as he always does, ending just a few inches below his jaw, flush to his skin in the way the loose loops of Tommy’s shirt are not. His robes are a deep, earthy green, opening down towards his sternum and only tied at the waist with a large, blue-and-white-striped sash. Over that lies his scabbard, belted to him with leather. His hat -- and  _ god,  _ Tommy almost lets out a noise, sad and low when he sees it, because it’s been so fucking  _ long  _ \-- with its long brim and the bucket-shaped top is striped and green, his blonde hair falling out beneath it. Tommy had always taken pride in having the same hair color as his father before everything. Now it just makes him anxious.

“Oh!” says the man, dark wings flaring out in surprise as he sees Tommy, heading over to pick up his sword. “That’s a new look.”

Tommy thinks back to his worn, scratchy outfit, easy enough to maintain in 2b2t, and he snorts. “It’s better than your dress, bitch.”

“Hey now!” Phil scoffs, brushing off the front of his robes in an exaggerated manner and then flexing his fists, lax at his side. “These robes are nice, Tommy. Comfortable. More so than… whatever it is you’d been wearing. It looked like the material of a tent, kiddo.”

“Ehhhhh……”

The squeaky noise startles Phil into a laugh. Then a grimace. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope,” Tommy says, a bit of defensive something rushing through him. It’s a sudden contrast from the humor he’d felt only a moment ago. He slides his sword into its sheath and stalks toward the door, footfalls silent as a cat. “Sorry the options were  _ limited.” _

“...Of course,” says Phil. He sighs and slides his cloak off the back of the couch. There’s a long pause, and Tommy looks around to see Phil staring at the fabric with deep scrutiny. “I don’t suppose you could still fit your old cloak, hm?”

“Oh, definitely not. I’ve beefed, Phil, couldn’t you tell,” Tommy says, managing to achieve a voice both energetic and monotone. He pats his arm, flexing it in a dramatically herculean position. When he looks back, Phil is just staring, smiling a little. Tommy rolls his eyes, huffing out something irritated past the scarred roll of his lips. “Are we gonna go, or are you gonna be sad over fabric this whole time?”

This time it’s Phil’s turn to roll his eyes.

The sky outside is a deep, ocean blue. It rolls on for hours. Tommy thinks he might’ve found it beautiful once, but he hurries into the cover of the trees now. 2b2t had rarely been a plentiful place, land scorched and sky punishing anyone who lived beneath it. Endless sunshine had been a sight to behold, burning and blazing all through the day. Phil follows after him at a slower pace, his eyes softly curious as they pass over his surroundings. Tommy has no such qualms about discovery. He has preferred to live life quickly since he was a child, and that preference has only changed in the respect that he fights the same way. 

“I thought you preferred bows,” Tommy says, breaking the silence. The only noise around for miles seems to be their boots in the snow, and the two of them have always tread lightly. It suddenly hits him where he is. He’s  _ hunting,  _ deep in the forest he’d once lived in, his  _ father  _ by his side. He’s filled with an abrupt sense of giddiness, something like excitement. 

“Ah, that I do,” says Phil, looking around. “I lost it with my last life.”

“Mhhhmmmmm.” Tommy drags the noise on and ignores the churning guilt in his gut.  _ His blood on your hands. Blood blood blood.  _ But he reaches into his inventory regardless. There lies a shulker chest, which he proceeds to open, stopping Phil in his tracks as he turns to look. The bright purple lid flicks open and he rummages inside, crouching down onto his heels. 

There it is- his father’s ancient quiver. One of the few belongings Tommy’d managed to keep when he was sent into 2b2t, strapped to his back and hidden beneath his cloak. Phil lets out a strangled noise at the sight, the gold-rimmed leather top and the dedicated curve of its strap. Beneath it is a bow and several stacks of arrows, all unenchanted, and Tommy pulls it out with a sigh. 

“How- how do you  _ have  _ this?” Asks Phil as the quiver is handed to him, his face lighting up. He runs a thin hand across its pitted surface, ignoring the blood, ignoring the tiny hole in the bottom where Tommy’d accidentally ripped it.  _ “Why  _ do you have this?”

“Call it nostalgia,” he replies. “And it was the only one left in the house when I ran off.”

The laughs Phil lets out -- genuinely happy, excited at the prospect of having one of his favorite items back -- draws a tentative smile to Tommy’s lips. It feels good, he thinks, to know that he’s done that. That he can make his father smile still, after all these years. Sometimes he misses being the comedic of the family. 

Thankfully, he’s snapped right out of his reverie when Phil strings his bow with an arrow and sends it flying into the sky. His hands, capable and strong, send the bladed weapon into empty blue, and Tommy lets out a soft:  _ “huh.”  _

“Well,” Phil says, chuckling. “That was cathartic. Shall we continue before we starve?”

They trek deeper into the forest. There are animals, yes, but they take their time, alternating between hunting ( _ blood blood blood burn for Phoenix Blood for the Angels Blood for the Gods)  _ and catching. Phil shoots; Tommy cuts. They make a good team, and it almost hurts, when he remembers that they could have had this far sooner had things been different. But they work for now, and it doesn’t feel  _ bad.  _ There are about two rabbits, a deer, and three wild turkeys in his inventory. Phil has dropped about seven squirrels in his time, but somewhere along the line, Tommy thinks they’ve just started to kill. He can see how routine it is now for both of them to draw blood when not necessary. Phil: used to years of only having one life to save him, killing any potential threat before it reared its ugly head. Tommy-

Tommy, slaying through armies and screaming, loud and horrible, out his hatred, a breath of fire. Tommy has killed thousands, both out of necessity and the sense of direction it pulled him towards.  _ Blood blood blood.  _

But then, they come upon a large clearing. Frowning, Phil -- who has been on edge at  _ every  _ clearing -- spins around, holding a hand up to shield the sun from his eyes. “It’s gotten a bit later, hm. Should we head back?”

Tommy, who is fantastic and epic in every way and does not get tired, lets out a groan. “Aw, big man! Don’t tell me you’re getting  _ tired.” _

“Weren’t you the one who said you hadn’t eaten for days?” Asks his father, nudging him with the bottom edge of his bow, grinning. It’s true, though. He does look tired. And so does Tommy, if his father’s slightly worried look is an indication. He feels it as well, limbs starting to ache with the lack of adrenaline. The act of hunting and killing something of lower intelligence than you is not  _ nearly  _ as satisfying as subverting expectations and killing someone who had meant to do so to you. 

But then, Tommy hears a crack, far louder than that of any animal’s steps, just past the next end of the clearing. 

“Did you hear that?” He asks, turning around. And, of course, because Phil’s avian blood is shared between the two of them, Tommy’s father nods. Their blacks slot together almost automatically, both of them deciding in an instant to protect the other. Their wings bend, allowed to coexist, trembling in the freezing afternoon air. Then, because Tommy is more than capable of taking care of himself, he steps forward, off the warm comfort of Phil’s robes, his feathers. “I’m going ahead to look.”

Phil nods, face obscured as he looks deep into the trees. “Shout if you need me.”

Tommy nods back. It feels good, to  _ trust. _

_ Blood blood blood.  _ Ah, he thinks. No ignoring the call for long, not even for a moment’s thought. He bends his knees and starts to crouch, lowering his field of vision and immediately tucking his wings to his back. The trees close up behind him, and he only looks back once more, seeing the green of his father’s robes, the black of his wings and the white of his skin.  _ Protect protect protect. Yours to protect. Yours to trust. _

Tommy nods his assent. He will not let this land claim any more of his family. 

Another crack rings out. This time, footsteps are unmistakable, someone coming from Tommy’s left. Then, unmistakable, behind him. Then the right, then forward and back again, suddenly coming from everywhere at once. It’s only one pair of legs, but they seem to occupy every inch of the ground every moment Tommy can breathe. Then he remembers his father, on the other side of the treeline, alone. His eyes widen as the footsteps increase in speed, slamming into the ground. They are  _ everywhere,  _ occupying every inch of his mind.

The wind screams. It’s guttural, inhuman, something distinctly  _ wrong  _ about every second it stretches, far too long to be right. 

_ “Tommy!”  _ Phil roars, his voice reverberating against the leaves. He sounds frantic, scared, even, but Tommy can’t even speak to answer. His voice is lodged in his throat, quelled by the  _ awful  _ scream in the air, his arms waving his blade out in an attempt to find its opponent. 

(He’s never seen  _ anything  _ like this.

Tommy is  _ scared.) _

An arrow shoots out, another shout of his name accompanying it. Tommy hears the wet thunk of flint on flesh, and he turns to its origin, eyes like  _ steel  _ as he advances upon it, as the howling wind pauses. But then, his name is being called again, and he turns, and Phil is at his side, and something a bit like awareness floods him.

“Tommy,” Phil says, breathless. Against his Will Tommy’s hands move, up to his father’s shoulders, pulling them both closer together. Phil states, eyes wide, and his wings move to close around the both of them. His hands are still on his bow, the other closed around the leather strap of his quiver. “Tommy, what the  _ fuck-“ _

“I- I don’t know,” says the boy. He’s not  _ scared  _ anymore, never really showed it either, for which he is proud of, but he hasn’t been in a solo fight in a while now either. The coliseum is a foreign enemy, his father’s chest the last he has cut through. The idea of fighting whatever had let out that  _ noise  _ is not a pleasant one. Phil’s wings are not unlike a hug as they stand, and Tommy leans closer, breathless. “You hit it, though,  _ Ender.” _

“Yeah,” Phil says, with a breathy chuckle. His eyes, typically wide and kind by basis, go dark. He peers over the edge of Tommy’s shoulders and his wings, back into the forest. His mouth tightens into a thin grin. “I reckon we’ve been in for visitors for a while, hm?”

“They could’ve just fucking  _ knocked.”  _

Phil lets out a snort. His wings start to rescind, and Tommy removes his hands rather awkwardly, feeling a bit like a child attempting to cling to their father after a nightmare.  _ You are,  _ say the voices, urgently.  _ That’s exactly what you are.  _

“Fuck  _ off,”  _ Tommy says, under his breath, as Phil starts to look back into the leaves. The elder man presses a hand to the white bark of a spruce tree, humming lightly. Then, as Tommy walks closer, blade still drawn to slice, he trips. 

At first, Tommy thinks he’s just seen his father stumble over a rock, a twig, or an overgrown weed, sticking up like a sore thumb. Then he looks  _ down. _

Long, brown shoes rap against the ground, hastily laced and covered in mud. The pants they're tucked around are foul with dirt and something far more red, shuffling around as the person shifts. Tommy’s eyes follow their figure, thin, their bright yellow sweater a jagged contrast against the dirty ground. And, perhaps the second most surprising: Phil’s foot has passed right through their leg.  _ Second,  _ most surprising. The first is their face.

“Hello, little brother!” Says Wilbur Soot, his hands passing through Tommy’s leg.

And, naturally, because he’s a genius, Tommy handles it like a champ.

(Kind of.)

“Wh- whuu- h- I-“

Wilbur’s face turns at his brother’s babbling, a breathy,  _ ghostly  _ noise escaping him. Phil lets out a bit of a shriek and tumbles backward, his back hitting the ground when he falls. Tommy, the opposite of his father, can’t seem to  _ tear his eyes away.  _ It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion, the way that Wilbur stands, his feet fading out of view like some awful, spectral hourglass. Tommy’s jaw drops, and his sword falls from his grip, thrown immediately into that night, months ago.

(Wilbur’s chest is stained red when Phil’s blade had plunged through it. His back is even more soaked, where his killer had died as well, struck through by Tommy’s careful hand. There are EnderFlame and explosions in the air, and the screaming around them rings from all about before there is nothing at all.)

“You sound scared, Tommy,” Wilbur says pleasantly. “Oh! Phil, why are you on the floor?”

Tommy looks over his shoulder. He can’t do much else but stare, mind coasting through every moment. His mind detaches, his eyes unfocusing as the idea that Wilbur is right in front of him starts to set in. A low, gasp of a breath falls from his chest as if he’s just remembered how to breathe. Phil is still on the ground, his face ashen as parchment, fingers digging into the dirt beneath him. He flinches, hard, skin going vaguely green when Wilbur leans over. 

Tommy’s brother is dead.

_ Dead dead dead.  _

Tommy turns, mind foggy, and walks away, back to the house, leaving the mirage before him to go scare his father some more. He will not be convinced by a fake. 

\---

_ It’s Wilbur Wilby Wilbur your brother Wilbur Wilbur Wilbur- _

By the time Phil returns back to the house, Tommy is out of his clothes and back into pajamas. He’s nursing a cup of tea, leaning up against the kitchen table, which is coincidentally littered with animal parts. The whole house smells like cooked meats, and there are several pelts piled up in a large, wicker box.

Tommy turns to look as the door slams back open thunderously. Phil’s ashen face is broken by blotchy red -- around his eyes, his nose -- and wide, furious eyes. His robes are in a muddy state of disarray, hat in his hands, and hair covered in leaves. His cloak is thrown to the ground as he turns to face someone outside, wings bristling up in clear anger. 

_ “You’ve given me no proof!”  _ He shouts, off into the trees. Then, he flinches, as the false specter of Tommy’s brother comes crawling into the home, hands on the doorway and eyes peering about curiously. 

“I didn’t think you’d need proof other than me, Phil!” Says Wilbur, releasing the doorway and now just drifting, looking pleasantly demure. “Ah, I haven’t been here for  _ years,  _ dad. Why were you gone again?”

“No, no no,” mutters Tommy’s father, a hand coming up and fisting into his hair. Yellow frames his face as it lifts, and Wilbur frowns in worry. Tommy just turns back around, turning the light on the stove on to check the meat’s process.

“Aw, Toms!” Says Wilbur, and he freezes, hand stuck on the switch. “It’s been a little bit, stop trying to run off!”

_ Run run run  _ is all the voices have said, he wants to say, for far too long, before Phoenix was born and they turned to  _ kill kill kill  _ instead. Tommy stands slowly, twisting on his heels, carefully folding his wings around his back as to not hit the stove. 

Wilbur’s face is nonsense singsong. Braid trains. Daisy necklaces and crowns, dreamed up, as Technoblade and their father sparred off to the side in the middle of a warm spring day. Wilbur’s face is an ashy, waxy blue, something a shade darker dripping down his chin. His chest, his yellow sweater, one he’d left behind for Tommy to keep when he’d left, one Tommy had left in turn, is stained with his blood. He floats, smiling, dipping his chin in a silent nod. 

“A  _ little bit,”  _ Tommy says, venomously.  _ “A little bit.”  _ Phil is still pacing. It looks like he’s trying to keep from yanking his own feathers out, and Tommy finds himself suppressing the same urge. It’d been a nasty habit as a child, but he’d quickly learned to end it, in 2b2t, where his wings were his greatest asset. “It was seven fucking  _ years,  _ you… you spectral  _ bitch.” _

Wilbur, who seems to be considering it, with a cocked head and a smile, hums. “Ehhh-- I don’t think it was quite that long, was it?” Then, his forehead creases. He leans over, his legs going up instead, flipping into an upside-down position. A book suddenly appears in his hands, and he taps it, fiddling with the pages. “Here’s my page on you, Tommy… Oh! No, oh no!” Wilbur looks over at Tommy from his odd positioning. Phil, in the background, cursing, makes the whole affair a whole lot less dramatic. “It says you- you died?”

“...You don’t remember?” Asks Tommy, getting increasingly more irritated. (Not worried. Not guilty. Not melancholy at all.)

“He doesn’t-” Phil chokes on a laugh. “He doesn’t remember fuck  _ all,  _ Tommy, said he only remembers the happy bits an- and then said he remembered my murdering him.” Phil stops his pacing, ripping a hand from his hair, clenching it into a fist and then stretching it, palm out, to gesture in Wilbur’s direction. “He- he kept looking in that book and- and I think he’s been writing bad memories in it.” 

“That’s right!” Says Will, his voice pathetically happy. It makes Tommy  _ sick.  _ (It makes him want to  _ cry.)  _ “I- I know alive-Wilbur was- was very  _ problematic,  _ and so I’m trying to make up for it! But I- I can’t do that if I… If I- erm- don’t remember. What. He did.”

His tone goes sadder and sadder as he speaks. Tommy feels a terrible urge to step forward and comfort him, but his fists just tighten at his sides, shaking, nails digging into his palms. He tastes blood on his tongue where he bites it, holding back a thousand words and several year’s worths of sobs. But then Wilbur smiles again, righting himself. He drifts forward toward Tommy, a slowed-down explosion, the start of fire as Tommy jerks backward, wings hitting the wall. A low noise rips out of his chest, something like a  _ “Go away”  _ and a  _ “Wilbur?”  _ all at once. The spectral facade of his brother lifts his hands, skeletal and gentle, and presses them onto his brother’s cheeks. They’re cold and dry and utterly  _ dead,  _ as his thumb trails over the edge of Tommy’s least-favorite scar, lifting his lip up into a grin. 

“What… happened, Tommy?” Wilbur gestures to the ruined husk of his own body, then back at Tommy, nose nearly bumping into his brother’s cheek as he stares into the scars along his face. “We match!” 

Something goes scattering as Tommy shoves his brother away, pushing him against the counter with a loud  _ crash.  _ Wilbur lets out a groan, Phil a gasp, their youngest family member a “get the fuck  _ off of me!”  _ As he lurches away, wings opening and starting to flutter, disturbing the cupboards. “You- you fucking  _ left us,  _ Wilbur! You left me and dad!”

“W- well, what about Technoblade?” Wilbur says, clearly taken aback by his brother’s reaction, hands clutching the side of the table. He flinches when Tommy laughs, then goes rummaging in his pockets, lifting out a handful of… “Do you- can I give you some blue?”

Tommy looks to his father with uncertainty. The man just shoves a hand up and across his face, groaning. “It’s just… blue dye. Take it if you want, it won’t hurt you.”

“Why would it hurt you?” Wilbur murmurs, sounding slightly hurt even as Tommy lifts a hand to accept the tiny lump. It’s a substance both powdery and thick, leaving residue on the ghost’s hands as it leaves them. Tommy swallows down the lump in his throat and nods, letting it scatter into his inventory. “It takes all your sadness away! That’s why it’s blue- it starts off all clear and pretty and it turns blue when you make it sad!”

“Will,” Phil says, voice wobbling. He’s finally joined them in the kitchen, looking far more defeated than angry. “It started blue.”

The ghost in question frowns, waves a spectral hand through his own head, and then shrugs. “Er- sorry! I must be sad.” Then, his expression deepens, furthering into confusion. “What was I sad about…?”

“Tell us something only the real Wilbur would know,” Tommy demands, cold and angry, because he has no time to help his brother go through an emotional reckoning. “Tell me, or I’m- you’ll  _ never  _ be him, to me. You’ll just be a- a fucking  _ fake.” _

The expression Wilbur gives him is…  _ heartbroken. _

It’s as blue as his dye, brow coming together with an aching line of sadness. His hands, abandoned at his side, come up, slow, but enough that Tommy flinches, mouth screwed into a scowl but his eyes wide. He can’t quell the horrible thought that this really might be Wilbur in his chest, especially as the familiar touch of his hands places itself on Tommy’s shoulders.

“Oh, Tommy,” murmurs the shell of his brother. As if a mirror, long, blue drops of tears start to coast down his face just as Tommy feels the same wet start to cover his own cheeks. His breath hitches, and Wilbur wraps his cold, dead arms around his back, smoothing down the open hole in his shirt, his chest solid yet  _ empty  _ as it presses against Tommy’s. “I don’t remember.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How we feeling, Ghostbur/Wilbur/Vilbur stans? Things having to do with the afterlife and stuff will be going differently than in canon in this fic, but they still loosely follow it along. Vilbur will not happen in this fic, sorry guys. (I mean: He won't be a villain to Phil or Tommy. That's not saying what everyone else will call this entire family, whether that be allies or enemies or gods.)
> 
> Also, a few people have expressed that they were surprised about Phil not being a terrible parent in this fic. If this is any consolation to yall: he is not perfect, either. Phil loves his kids dearly, but he is NOWHERE near perfect. When it comes down to it it will always be his kids over just about anything, but that doesn't mean he's some saint of a parent. I honestly don't think I'd be able to write a perfect parent if I tried.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have a briefly Technoblade-ish interlude!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: There is a mention of Jschlatt trying to murder Tubbo, but I don't think there's anything else. One thing about Jschlatt, though: I'm personally a big fan of his character, and I have Many Thoughts about why he was the way he was. He is not a villain, or even a particularly awful person in this fic. He's certainly not a good guy right now, but the main villain of this story is Dream and no one else!
> 
> Also, apologies, but I retconned a detail in one of the other chapters. In the first chapter, Tubbo calls Tommy Tommy instead of Phoenix. I initially kept that detail in, but I've decided it doesn't really make sense! So, I've gone back, and Tubbo does not know Phoenix's real name anymore. Sorry about that.

Technoblade is  _ tired.  _

_ It’s more than that,  _ remind the voices, gently chiding. He agrees. He is  _ exhausted,  _ right down to his bones, deep into the marrow of his ribs. It sloshes about inside of him like water on an empty stomach, weighing him down. He has no one left to share that sleepy feeling with, though. He accepts the heavy burden of his own exhaustion and stands from his bed.

He has waged war before. It’s happened several times, actually. First, as a test run when he and Wilbur had passed through 2b2t, escaping people when they’d accidentally had their coordinates dropped. Then, again, years later, against the Dream SMP. Several of those wars had been won, even more, left unfinished. Their most recent attempt had been the most disastrous by far.

Wilbur, dead by the hands of an absent father who had not only abandoned them, grown adults, but his child of a son as well. Pogtopia’s presumed ally, Phoenix, ripping the dirt from the earth with  _ five ender dragons.  _ They’d been nothing like the original, he’s sure. Philza’s been the only person to defeat her-- not that he’d admit it if you asked -- the God of The End, before. But the copies had been strong and angry and they’d destroyed their land, killing thousands. 

Now, under Quackity’s crumbling mind, they intend to fight again.

L’Manberg is in shambles. Technoblade understands, through everything, that he is fighting a losing game. He knows with all his heart. He knows where Tubbo goes at night, meeting his father over the walls. He knows that Quackity’s sanity is cursed to slip just as it has for every other ruler of this land. He knows that Tommy and Wilbur are gone, but he can still hope to see them both again someday, so he can hope for L’Manberg as well.

“This’ll be fun,” he mutters to nowhere. His room is dark. He’d rebuilt his house right after its roof had caved in -- an unfortunate side effect of DragonFlame -- but nothing has felt the same since it had initially been built. Wilbur and he had shared it, once, before the man had gotten more ambitious and their nation had been completely carved out. Techno’d never moved back in with Wilbur, preferring his self-made home. Now, it just feels cold and empty, the stone walls freezing as he trudges over to his dresser. 

Will’s coat hangs heavy on his shoulders when he shrugs it on. He’s worn the same black and white suit for the past months, appearing stiffly, falsely professional in front of a nation heavily divided. 

_ Or you could leave. Go go go. Leave leave leave. Blood blood blood.  _

“I’m not just  _ leaving  _ L’Manberg,” he says, with a scoff and a twitch of his hands. He has a duty here, no matter how small. It is his prerogative, his job now that his brother is no longer around to do it.  _ But you could run,  _ whispers the voices, tempting him.  _ You could go. You could fight.  _ Techno dismisses them with a sneer. “M’ not the fighting type.”

_ YOU WERE,  _ say the voices, clearly rising in volume and urgency. He flinches, ass planting on the floor when it makes him physically stumble into the kitchen table.  _ YOU COULD BE AGAIN.  _

“H- would you all just shut yer fucking mouths for over a  _ second?” _

They start to dim as his annoyance becomes clear. He rearranges his brother’s jacket and groans, pressing one hand heavily into the floor and leveraging himself up off of it. Techno rubs a tired hand across his eyes, twisting his fingers over his nose in an attempt to quell his building headache. Then, throwing a hand up in defeat as the voices start to chant ( _ blood blood blood)  _ he nods.

“If I ditch Quackity for  _ one day  _ will you all shut up for a moment?”

_ Yes! Yes yes yes! Yes! Ditch him! Ditch it! Go! Go go go! _

Their ringing endorsement is enough of a confirmation for him. And honestly, he’s not too jazzed at the idea of going to work right now. He hasn’t had a break since L’Manberg first began rebuilding, spending all of his hours manning patrols, building barriers, moderating arguments between Quackity and Tubbo. (And avoiding his father, though he’d been lucky enough to only need to do so once.) So, instead of heading towards the main city, he quiets his worry and smooths down his cloak, head twisting about and trying to select a target to go towards for the day. He’s unused to this sort of agency, his life so shoved full of distractions from the day he and Wilbur had left home. But his mind echoes with memories of times where days were mostly consumed with sparring and books, and he glances into the forest with a decisive nod. 

“How about we do a bit of foraging?” Techno suggests, humming.

_ Target practice,  _ suggest the voices right back unhelpfully. He sighs. 

But, his day — already deterred by those in his head — will not be derailed further. Techno reaches to the hilt of his sword with a pointed look and then proceeds to shove it further into the hilt. The voices groan their laments, but he just chuckles, cloven hooves clicking against fallen leaves and broken sticks. He hasn’t done much foraging in years, though he knows it’s somewhere in his blood, buried in his genes. Being a piglin hybrid -- and emphasis on the  _ hybrid,  _ because he’s always been more human than pig -- gives him a bit more of a sense of survival than most of his family ever had. So he skates the edge of the forest, not straying far within, leaning over and inspecting little pockets of herbs and mushrooms. Witches butter, hen-of-the-woods, the little, unidentifiably magic red and white polka-dotted ones that spot the entire world. 

_Cook cook cook_ prod the voices. He grins, shoveling another hunk of sulphur shelf into his satchel. _Chef chef chefblade._ _Behind you behind you kill kill kill-_

The sudden change in the air is like a slap to the face. The woods, once comforting, suddenly seem to shrink around him, and Techno stands, hand suddenly thankful for the hilt of his sword, clutching it carefully. He turns slowly, drawing his netherite blade -- one of the only left in L’Manberg, now, when everyone lost their items to Dragon Fire -- and letting the point shine menacingly in the light. 

“Reveal your position,” he drawls, the edge of his glasses shouldered upward as he stares. His satchel stays lax at his side now, vegetation traded for the voice’s initial request. He thinks, as they scream for blood, that this might have been their plan all along.

But then-

There’s an enderman’s voice. It gurgles, soft and mechanical, something almost like English at the very edge of their words, barely understandable. Techno has never had any quarrel with Endermen -- they’d always liked his father when he was a child, some sixth sense revealing to them that he had been the one to free them. That had never extended to Techno, of course; he’d never killed their jailer. But he still averts his eyes from wherever the mob has spoken, letting out a brief sigh when the voices start to diminish in his head, disappointed.

“I won’t hurt you, unless you hurt me.” Techno takes another step further, catching the end of a long, spindly black leg moving through the trees. “Just let me pass, ok?”

“I won’t hurt you, unless you hurt me.”

His words are spit out back at him a few seconds later, soft and hesitant,  _ clearly  _ no longer enderspeak. He jerks back and frowns, readying himself to draw his blade and strike. But then the lurching figure of an enderman steps forward, shaking their head and hands with wide, embarrassed eyes.

“No, no, sorry!” Says a creature that has Techno stopping in his tracks. They’re tall, hunched over to avoid the branches. They wear a suit not unlike the one he wears during official business, black and buttoned up with gold, extravagant detailing. A red tie swings from their chest where they bend, undone and sticking out of their suit jacket. And, most of odd of all, their skin. One half mixes into the other, a deep, obsidian black swirling into a milky white, their  _ hair --  _ a distinctly non-enderman trait -- a mixture of both. They’ve got a green eye on their black side, an albino red on the other. Their expression is one of panic, their mouth slightly ajar to reveal fangs, a mix of an enderman’s maw and something unknown. “I just- I’m just nervous!”

“You’re- you-  _ heh?”  _ Technoblade sheaths his sword, keeping one hand on the handle but not doing as the voices beg for him to do. He’s more interested than murderous right now, turning his head and consuming more of the enderman-hybrid’s physique. “Who in Ender’s name are  _ you?” _

“Oh- this is going  _ terribly,”  _ moans the person, bringing a hand up to smack at their forehead. “I- I’m er- I’m Ranboo!” They then move that hand, extending it in greeting. Techno stares at it dubiously. Their goofy smile slips, replaced by the look of someone who is  _ incredibly  _ unsure of themselves. “Dream whitelisted me?”

“...He  _ whitelisted you.  _ Yknow, I’m still not entirely sure what the hell that means, considering the fact that I’ve been here longer than him.”

The half-enderman just lets out a wheezy, anxious sort of laugh, muttering something unintelligible in enderspeak. They retract their hand and run it across the back of their neck, blushing an odd shade of purple. “Er- he… he let me in. My- my name is Ranboo?”

Techno squints. For a long, silent moment, the voices are the only noise for miles around.  _ Kill kill kill.  _ He twitches.  _ It’ll end up tits up. Kill kill kill. Whitelisted. Kill kill kill.  _ Then, with a heavy sigh and an incline of his head, he nods, shrugging his arm more casually against the hilt of his sword. “Welcome to L’Manberg, Ranboo.”

\---

Fifteen minutes later, he’s starting to regret not just leaving the half enderman in the forest. Ranboo is anxious and fidgety and fluttering with nervous energy, a rabid sort of paranoia in his eyes whenever anyone passes. Technoblade, who is more used to being a president’s right-hand man than an over-glorified tour guide, drawls on about the least-destroyed parts of the map. Ranboo takes the information in stride, scribbling it in his book, thumbing at the pages as he reviews his info. Techno doesn’t ask what it’s for. 

“But what’s over the wall?” 

Techno stiffens. That’s… not exactly a sore spot, but certainly something he doesn’t usually enjoy talking about when not in the war council. But Ranboo looks incredibly curious, and  _ maybe  _ Techno is developing a soft spot for teenagers, seeing as he’s been so oddly pleasant to Tubbo as of late, so he sighs, nodding his head in agreement to answer.

“That,” he begins, briefly shutting his eyes as memories of the wall’s inception come to mind, “is the greater Dream SMP. Currently, they’re all trying to come over here and murder everyone, so, yknow, we try not to interact with em’ much. You’ve got Dream, and George, and Jschlatt, who are all currently trying to wage war on L’Manberg. But, eh. L’Manberg is a-“ he does jazz hands for emphasis “-special place! So I’m here defendin’ it.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Ranboo scribbles down the info and then shuts his book, chewing thoughtfully on the end of his pencil. It’s a bit funny, how the boy hunches when he stands, only barely making him taller than Techno. He’s sure that if Ranboo stood to his full height he’d be quite a bit larger. “You- erm. Your brother helped found L’Manberg, right? You and Wilbur Soot?”

He squints at Ranboo. “You a history book, Ranboo?”

The half enderman flushes, cheeks going purple and head ducking in anxiety. “No! No- I just… I used to wanna run for President, back when I was a bit younger. I’ve got a- a terrible memory, but I wrote down quite a bit of history about L’Manberg in here.” He gestures to his book — and the cover, which quite enigmatically reads  _ DO NOT READ.  _ “It just helps me keep track of things, yknow?”

“I suppose.”  _ Blood blood blood.  _ “Would you shut up?”

“Oh?” Ranboo shrinks away, looking slightly pitiful. 

Techno shrugs laboriously. “Not you.”

_ “Oh?”  _ Repeats Ranboo, only sounding increasingly more confused, his fingers clutching his book like a lifeline. “Are- are you ok?”

He nods, letting out a hum of half-agreement. “My bloodlines cursed, Ranboo. It’s- it’s pretty damn common in this ledge of the woods.” Then, because the kid is starting to look a little creeped out: “I hear voices. Asking me to do things. It’s just irritating, I won’t hurt you.”

He’s used to this. Being feared for what resides in his mind, even with how intrusive it all is. He supposes it’s probably warranted, seeing as his father -- while not often -- had been overtaken by his voices before, turning into something more anomalistically brutal than human. But Techno has  _ never  _ lost control before. He’s cultivated a careful grasp on it all, and he thought his brother had as well. But in the end, Wilbur had died, and he’d raved about his voices for days on end beforehand.

“Ah, curses- curses are tricky,” Ranboo says bitterly. Then he frowns. “Huh. I’m not actually sure why I think that.”

_ They’re coming they’re coming blood blood- _

_ “What?”  _ Techno hisses, clutching at his temple in annoyance as the great tide of voices rises. They’ve been unruly today, sure, but nothing he hasn’t seen of late. But this is more than just annoyance. It’s a frantic, paranoid whisper, thousands of things begging for his attention. He nearly stumbles, almost shoving Ranboo over in the process, and looks around, staring hard at the obsidian surface of the wall at the voices prompting. “Ranboo, do you see anything at the wall?”

The enderman hybrid leans further over, hunching his shoulders and squinting his luminescent eyes. Then, with a low, droning noise, half enderspeak and half english, he hums. “Looks like there are about… a few men? Crawling over the wall. Ooo, they’re sorta creepy Are- are they not supposed to be here?”

“Is- do any of them have on a  _ mask?” _

Ranboo looks harder. Then, his entire face starts to lighten, the dark side ashy as the other. He curls in on himself and flinches away like he’s just been struck. His shoulder falls into Techno and he turns, the terror stark on his face.

“It’s Dream, isn’t it?” Techno says, mouth gone dry, fangs worrying at his lip. Ranboo’s shaking is enough of an answer. The voices roar a tide like a tsunami as he draws his sword, and he starts to think he should’ve just stayed at work. “Then let’s go fix that.”

“Wh- what?” Splutters Ranboo, only barely following Techno as he starts to walk forward, weapon raised. His crossbow is next -- he tosses it to Ranboo, who fumbles for a moment, before peering at him curiously.

“For self-defense,” Techno reasons. “You’re gonna let me do the bloodletting.”

As he gets closer to the wall, Dream and his cronies get clearer. It’s the ringleader, George, Sapnap, Bad, and to Techno’s surprise, Jschlatt seems to have joined them. No matter- he defends without discrimination and raises his sword to them all.

“Ranboo,” he says, urgent in every sense of the word. The Enderman hybrid has begun to shake and shiver, mouth hung open, little mechanical words slipping out. Techno turns, recognizing that  _ shit _ , he probably shouldn’t have brought the kid in. He gently takes the crossbow from the boy’s hands and takes one of the clawed paws in his grasp, pulling the kid out of the way. Then, he snaps in front of his face, nodding when Ranboo blinks, eyes seeming to finally see Techno again. “Ranboo, stay here, alright? I won’t let them hurt you?”

He isn’t sure why he feels the sudden burst of protectiveness that he does. Maybe he’s tired. Maybe he’s just bored of watching children die. Maybe he’s just going as crazy as his brother.

He ends up on the edge of the wall regardless, peering downward as Jschlatt and Dream talk animatedly. Or -- Jschlatt does, and Dream nods quietly. The former president looks better than he had months ago, all things considered. Still a little crazed, still a little frantic. But he no longer reeks of alcohol and sweat, instead of coffee and nicotine gum, as he had when he first arrived in the Dream SMP. There’s no love between him and Techno, though, and he takes his crossbow up in his hands, firing a single warning shot.

Right into Dream’s shoulder.

The man stumbles on impact, the bright smile of his mask not even slipping. Blood splatters against the pristine white surface of Jschlatt’s shirt, and he shrieks, stumbling back a step into Sapnap, who proceeds to shove him right back. Techno snickers at the chaos that ensues, Dream standing there with one hand to the wound, his friends running around like headless chickens and trying to see who has just shot him. 

Then Dream stops.

He snaps the arrow in half, watching it fall to the ground. Blood stains the deep green of his gloves, as his head lifts. His mask’s beady eyes meet Techno’s, and a terrible chill runs through him.

Dream is fast.  _ Inhumanely  _ fast, leaving his company behind in the dust as he clutches the bricks of the wall, grabbing at its grooves and starting to climb up in an instant. Techno’s a bit taken aback, really, that the man presumes he can’t just shoot another arrow. He does, grinning all the way. Only for that grin to slip, when, in an instant,  _ Dream catches the arrow.  _ It skitters down the side of the wall and onto the ground as he tosses it away.

Soon enough, the wall is cleared. Techno stands, blood rushing in his ears, and draws his sword.

“Blade.”

Techno grins at hearing the familiar nickname. There’s a rush in his veins, and he bites at it, gripping the chant of  _ blood blood blood  _ now that he has cause to call upon it. “Dream.”

There is no hesitation. Dream strikes first, his netherite blade hitting Techno’s with a flick of his wrist. There’s a flourish and a flash of orange as fire aspect hits fire aspect, driving the two of them to leap apart to avoid the burn. Techno runs forward a second later, sweeping his blade down low and forcing Dream to catapult himself further backward. 

An arrow shoots upward, narrowly missing Techno’s nose. Dream holds out a hand to draw, and  _ roars,  _ voice an angry, reckless thing that makes whoever shot the bolt recoil. “This is  _ my fight!”  _ He shouts. “And I’ll finish it myself!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be so confident.” Techno rushes forward, and metal hits metal once again. It feels good to battle, to war and to fight, his body unused to it but aching for it still. Dream slams the hilt of his sword into Techno’s arm; Techno slams his into the middle of Dream’s mask. Techno receives a nasty slice on his temple for his trouble; he gives Dream one to match on his stomach. Red bubbles up and starts to wet his lashes, sticky and coppery, smelling of metal as it starts to cloud his vision.

It’s not unlike how his father had once described losing control. All you saw was red and then you would know that you weren’t there any longer.

_ (Blood blood blood.) _

But Techno has control. He has precision. He blocks hits and steadies his legs, keeping his balance on the most precarious parts of the wall as Dream dances his back and forth dance. And, for a moment, he is  _ winning.  _

Then a crossbow bolt lodges itself in his leg. He jerks, then stumbles, everything going dark as his head hits the wall on the way down.

\---

“You are a dumb, reckless piece of  _ shit!”  _

Quackity’s berating, while not quite  _ effective,  _ does succeed in making Technoblade increasingly more irritated. That and two large head wounds. And the crossbow bolt still embedded in his leg. 

“What was I supposed to think, Quackity?” He growls, throwing his hands up at his position at the table. The president in question paces back and forth at the end of their “council,” Tubbo and Fundy the only two left to attend, both shrinking back from his scrutiny. “They’re enemies in our territory!”

“If you’d been in work today, you would’ve known they were here to negotiate with us, you fucking  _ dimwit-” _

Tubbo squirms nervously in his seat. “Can we all just-” 

Both Techno and Quackity seem to be in agreeance when they whip around, glaring daggers into the boy. “No,” they say in unison, venomous in sharp. Technoblade usually has no fight with the boy, no love lost. But today, it is him and Quackity waring. Not Tubbo against L’Manberg. The president looks back at Techno a moment later, hands shoved into his pockets and fisting the fabric deep inside.

“Now, because you can’t keep your murder boner under control, we might be thrown even-”

The doors slam open. Suddenly, Dream finds himself in the doorway of a room filled with shouts, his stupid grinning mask wiped away of blood.  _ He’s  _ been aloud to have his wounds tended to. Techno, evidently, is less important. He snorts. 

“Mr. President,” says the man, smooth and kind. There’s something serpentine, manipulative, in the way he speaks, stepping forward after holding the door open for George to join him. “We don’t plan on waging war.”

Quackity blinks, then frowns, then grins. He’s manic. “You don’t?”

“Not  _ yet,”  _ continues Dream. The “But” implied in his words is palpable. Quackity’s face falls. Techno is reminded of a time when the man was a little saner, and he sighs. When, instead of violent, Quackity was almost more of a comic. Preferring to aid his fiance from the side, a calm and balancing hand to keep Jschlatt from total madness. Then the ram hybrid had gone totally off the deep end, taking his husband with him as he’d tried to murder his own son. 

“It’s understandable that Technoblade would be wary of us, considering our history,” says Dream, stepping further in. He plants his hands on the table and cocks his head, grin out for everyone to see. “I don’t fault him. In fact: I condemn his ability to protect his country, no matter the  _ cost.” _

The word sends a chill through Techno. He stills.  _ It's a promise,  _ whisper the voices, more hushed now.  _ A promise. _

“And, there will need to be a cost.” Dream lifts his head from the grain of the table. “If you can’t keep a firm leash on your watchdog, Quackity, what's stopping it from attacking us all?”

“I am  _ not a-” _

But Quackity raises a hand, silencing Techno with a look bordering on furious. His memories flicker back to when he and Wilbur were the only ones in L’Manberg with the authority to silence someone so quickly. But he goes quiet anyways, silently seething, fangs worrying at his lips and nose crumpled into a sneer.

“What do you propose, Dream?”

The other man pretends to consider it, for a moment. Then, his body rolls slowly upward. He claps his hands before his chest, a regal nature to him, to the long green-black cloak billowing behind him. 

“A demotion. Make him a guard, not a leader. Have him collect his father and Phoenix if you will,” Dream says,  _ (orders)  _ with a flick of his hand, dismissive and uncaring. But Techno can see, under it all, a calculating, puppeteer's grip, and he is filled with a sense of dread.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hgsddfajdvdjdgh Can anyone tell I'm uncomfortable with Ranboo's character? It's super irrational, but I genuinely can't watch him half of the time. I have pretty terrible memory issues of my own sometimes and his character just hits a little too close to home WHHOOPS
> 
> I won't let it interfere with this story, though! So please do tell me if any of my hesitance in writing him is obvious, so I can make sure he's well characterized and accurate to canon.  
> -  
> Technoblade: Ughhh I'm so tired  
> The Voices: Then take a break lol  
> Technoblade: Fuck you what are you talking about
> 
> Jschlatt: I may be a bad parent, but at least I'm not getting shot at right now!  
> Jschlatt: Oh!
> 
> Tubbo: Can we-  
> Quackity: Fuck OFF Jesus christ 
> 
> Dream: I'm so swag look what I can do   
> Dream: *Drives several generations of L'Manbergian leaders into total madness and then manipulates them into being his friend*  
> Dream: So swag


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter where it's the calm before the storm, and nothing goes wrong. Everyone gets a chance to speak here.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: at the very end of the chapter, we have a very brief blurb from Ghostbur's point of view. He kind of wonders why Alivebur had ever wanted to be alive, implying that being dead is the best thing to ever happen to him. This is coming from a VERY unreliable narrator there, and I want to make sure everyone reading this knows that. Ghostbur may be happier now, but his death, from an outside standpoint, is not a good thing. Death is never the best option, it just feels like it to Ghostbur, who spent a good portion of his life being angry and depressed and in mourning, so he has quite a bit of unresolved trauma.

“So, Wilbur,” says Phil, about a week after the specter joins him and Tommy in their house, one more person to keep it from being empty, one more person who isn’t truly there. 

“Ghostbur!” Reminds the ghost with a smile, sitting on the kitchen table and kicking his legs cloudily. They look like a misty summer morning, not quite formed all the way, sending wisps of ashy blue skin spiraling every which way. Phil shoots him an awkward half-smile and nods.

“Ah- yeah, sorry ‘bout that, mate.  _ Ghostbur,”  _ he repeats, and the words sound foreign in his mouth. He would much prefer to be able to say his son’s name alone. But, Phil supposes, perhaps he lost the privilege to do so the moment he left home. “Ghostbur. Would you like to go on a walk?”

Tommy’s already by the door, pulling his boots on. Phil and his youngest son have made it routine- to try and hunt, to try and do something  _ normal  _ every few days now, but Phil’d put his foot down the night before and said  _ no,  _ Ghostbur wouldn’t want to hunt with them, and so Tommy had suggested a walk. Wilbur’d always hated it when Techno and Phil came home with a pile of dead animals, always telling them he’d never want to join, despite his youngest brother’s vigor. 

The ghost’s eyes widen, brighter than usual at the prospect of leaving the home, going with his family. His legs, still fading in and out of the countertop, still for a moment so he can jump down and float a few inches above the floor. Ghostbur’s beanie nearly slides off in his excitement, and Phil pushes it back over his hair fondly. “Oh! Where are we going?”

“Just on a walk around the area,” Phil responds with a shrug, pulling on his cloak now that he has an affirmative response. The day is vaguely warm for the snowy weather that usually surrounds their house, the sky overcast but still simmering with a soft yellow hue of sunlight. It casts shadows from the treeline, deep gouges in the snow, and makes the powdery white blinding. “Unless you’ve got a better idea, hm?”

“Nope!” 

Ghostbur has no cloak. He has no shoes to change into or scarf to tie around his neck -- at least not like Tommy, with his dark green bandana and the spotty cloak that Phil really would like to replace soon. The ghost walks out the door and scans the landscape as Tommy makes his way down the stairs, skipping a step at a time, Phil locking the door behind the two of them. Only two pairs of footprints appear in the snow. It’s an odd sight to see, one man floating a foot above both the others. It makes Phil’s heart hurt. This is his fault. 

But there’s no time to simmer in guilt. Tommy kicks up a puff of snow and whistles as it flies away, powdery in the way that ash can be. Phil smiles as he watches his kid actually be a  _ kid,  _ then winces when Tommy turns around and kicks a poof right into his face.

“Arg- not near Ghostbur!” He says, though his mouth fills with snow before he can finish his (quite frankly, useless) admonishment. Tommy snickers, ignoring Phil as the man wipes melting snowflakes off the front of his robes, continuing onward as his feet sink deeper into the snow. Phil knows better than to aim a projectile at his deeply traumatized son, so he kicks up white around Tommy’s ankles instead, satisfied by the mocking glower the boy sends his way. The effect of the gloom is immediately negated by Ghostbur floating over and fussing over them, running his hands across Phil’s shoulders and Tommy’s back and trying to get the snow off. 

All he succeeds in doing is making his hands melt. Their walk does not last long.

Once they’re back inside, Ghostbur and Tommy huddle around the fireplace as if the action is instinctive. It used to be exactly what they do after a snowball fight -- Techno would usually win, and the eldest and youngest together would admit defeat and plot away in the corner. Phil can hear them muttering together now, as starts the kettle and wonders whether they like sugar with their tea anymore. Nothing has been righted by his eldest’s arrival. Nothing has been fixed, nor sewn back together, nor changed radically at all.

But Tommy shoves his brother to the side when the man starts to sing the L’Manbergian theme. Ghostbur lets out a laugh and cuffs Tommy’s forearm, careful to keep the hit light and in his brother’s view. Phil smiles as he stirs honey into the tea, and the ache in his chest perhaps lessens some.

\---

Tommy isn’t sure when his father takes up sewing again. Back before everything bad had happened, it had never even really been a hobby. Phil would sit down in front of the fire with Techno sitting next to him, legs crossed and fingers palming through parchment as his father picked through piles of fabric. Wilbur and Tommy would always lose interest too quickly to be curious about what was being made unless it was  _ for  _ them.

He sees Phil get out an ancient box of moth-bitten fabric, needles and thread on top of it all. He doesn’t settle in the living room -- which has really become more of an over-glorified bedroom, Tommy and his father both apparently preferring to nest down against the couch and the floor rather than return to their rooms. But no, Phil takes the basket into his room and keeps the door only barely open, leaving Tommy to speculate about what he might be sewing.

Ghostbur -- and it feels ridiculous to call his brother that, and he almost refuses to, until he realizes how cruelly belligerent that would be -- has begun to bet that he’s sewing a  _ tent.  _ Tommy asks him why he’d think their father is sewing something so stupid as a tent, and Ghostbur laughs and doesn’t answer, making spooky ghost noises through the halls for the next hour.

Actually, that seems to be the ghost’s one tactic to annoy Tommy. He no longer does what “Alivebur” would’ve done -- poke Tommy in the sides, sing noisily in the shower, gang up against him with Techno to start a prank war that devolves into something dangerous, until Phil forces them all to stop -- to annoy Tommy. Instead, he seems to prefer to just be…  _ dead.  _ Pass through walls, wail comedically, shove things off of shelves.

So, Tommy decides he ought to come up with better tactics as well.

Sneaking up behind Ghostbur and scaring him is out of the question. Tommy knows  _ he’d  _ probably accidentally kill someone if they did that to him, and he doesn’t want to test his brother’s barely-there sanity. Pranks are just about useless because all of what Alivebur had owned is now considered Alivebur’s, and not Ghostbur’s. Getting Phil to tell Will to stop is just about useless because he just stands in the hallway and laughs his ass off as Tommy gets increasingly frustrated. 

So he hatches a plan. An ingenious one, if he does say so himself, along with one he hopes is relatively harmless. (But seeing as Ghostbur seems to be getting louder every time he makes ghost noises, Tommy’s reaching his limit of tolerance. Threatening to banish his brother back to the afterlife doesn’t even make him blink anymore.)

Ghostbur leaves and wanders around other places, sometimes. Phil always sends him out with a warning to avoid trouble and water, and Tommy always asks him quite politely to never come back. (Right before he accepts a handful of blue from Ghostbur’s shimmering hands, huffing out a laugh and concealing the smile it brings to his lips. 

This time, Tommy leaves with him. Phil sends them off with a warning to avoid trouble and water  _ and  _ L’Manbergian citizens, though Tommy thinks that one is mostly directed to him. Ghostbur is quietly talkative as he walks, but leaves his brother with a goodbye and a salute, floating off in the opposite direction and whistling. 

Tommy is a human GPS. He is a human  _ genius.  _ He is  _ The Phoenix,  _ legendary ring-fighter of 2b2t, rarely killed and even more rarely  _ losing. _

Tommy cannot find any sheep for the life of him.

“It cannot be this hard,” he mutters, as he finds himself back into the open arctic air. He finds mountain goats and llamas and arctic foxes and little white rabbits, their teeny-tiny beady eyes bright red, staring into his soul before he scares them away with an intimidating beat of his wings. But Tommy, the fucking  _ legend  _ he is, cannot find a sheep. 

He searches for well over an hour, quickly finding that he is very out of practice when it comes to scavenging for animals like this. He hadn’t needed to look for animals in 2b2t since the very beginning, and even then, he’d starved to death about four times before he even found any god-forsaken  _ roadkill.  _ (Eating half-rotted squirrel guts will kill you even faster than starvation, fun fact.) But somehow, there seem to be absolutely no sheep around.

All he’d wanted to do was bring the sheep into his house and make it get  _ loud.  _ Annoy the shit out of Ghostbur until he stops moaning and groaning and braying every time Tommy says something rude to him. Of course, Tommy rationalizes, there are other, louder animals. The llamas nearby are a damned good example of that. But Tommy has set out to find a sheep,  _ not  _ a fleabag, spitty worm bag of a llama.

It takes well over two hours before he finds  _ any  _ sign of his animal of choice. It’s rather ridiculous. He climbs snowy dunes. He picks through barren bushes. He falls into more than one hidden ice-pit, nearly breaking his back in his search. But  _ finally,  _ in the far-off distance, he sees the horns of a ram and a pouf of wool as white as snow.

Only- the closer he gets, the more the sheep looks wrong.

There are actually three, and not one, massive, mega-sheep as Tommy gets closer and finds he can see more. Two have horns, the other a female, a bit smaller, and grazing unbotheredly as the men wander around. They’re fluffy and warm-looking and loud, as far as Tommy can tell from here. 

Then he realizes one of them is bright fucking  _ blue. _

“What the  _ shit,”  _ he murmurs, as he walks up to their small conglomeration, tucking his wings down flat to his back so as to not scare them. Tommy settles himself behind a bush with the intention of pulling out some wheat to lure them back home, only to become absolutely enraptured with the fact that one of the sheep is a bright, almost neon blue. 

It seems to be quite a bit more active than the other two as well, head swerving to stare directly at him when a branch breaks beneath his feet, face disconcertingly intelligent. He’s heard of Not-Deer and cryptic creatures before -- especially in a place such as 2b2t, where rumors of things like Herobrine or Notch move quickly -- but never has he actually seen one that feels like it lives up to the name.

“Oh, hello Tommy!”

Someone is behind him. He twists automatically, already flicking a knife up out of his boot and into his hands. He presses it to the person’s neck the moment he’s off the ground, teeth bared in a snarl, adrenaline pounding.

Ghostbur waves awkwardly, neck phasing in and out of the blade. Tommy lets out a violent string of curses.

“Don’t fucking sneak up on me, you absolute  _ prick!” _

Ghostbur’s smile falters, and he frowns, looking away. “I- I just wanted to say hello? I see you’ve found Friend.”

Though he’s definitely still chock-full with anxiety, Tommy looks to where his brother is pointing regardless. For a moment, he thinks something along the lines of  _ oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,  _ as Ghostbur points straight at the fucking  _ Not-Sheep. _

“Ghostbur,” he says, slowly, as if talking to a child, tucking his knife back into his boot. “Ghostbur, that thing is  _ evil.  _ It’s got-  _ human eyes.” _

“Stop being mean!” Admonishes Ghostbur, before he skates across the ground and towards his…  _ Friend.  _ Tommy winces as his brother places a hand on the bright blue fur of its back, only to settle when the things eerily perceptive eyes just blink, long lashes fluttering. “He can hear you, yknow?”

“Uh, yeah. I bet he can understand me too, Jesus Christ, Wilby, you found the one sheep in the world that only has intentions of- of pure fuckin  _ evil-” _

_ “No!  _ Stop bullying him!” Ghostly fingers stretch across the tip of Friend’s horns. Tommy thinks his brother might’ve been aiming for his ears and gotten lost along the way, but he just snorts, watching as the man pouts. He looks rather funny, spectral sky-blue matching the abrupt cerulean below him. Friend bleats suddenly, startling the two of them both, its hooves stomping in the snow insistently. Ghostbur laughs. Tommy is far less pleased.

“Is this where you go every day?” Tommy asks, folding his arms disapprovingly. “To make friends with evil sheep monsters?”

Ghostbur pouts even harder. He slumps over Friend’s back, curling his arms around the thing’s neck. Tommy grimaces as the thing bleats harder, but seems to tolerate the intrusion into its personal space. Then, his brother pulls out a handful of blue, holds it in front of its face, and lets it  _ eat it. _

“You- you- what the  _ fuck?”  _ Squeaks Tommy, fisting a hand into his hair in disbelief. “Aw- Jesus Christ Wilby, no wonder he’s all- all fucken  _ wrong  _ an’ shit! You can’t just feed it blue dye-”

“Blue,” corrects Ghostbur pleasantly, still with his hand out, little bits of dye falling to the ground as Friend messily eats it. Tommy’s older brother, hardened, manic, explosion-loving leader of L’Manberg,  _ giggles,  _ as the Not-Sheep’s rough tongue scrapes his hand.

“Fine! Fine! It’s called blue! But why’re you letting that thing eat it?”

The lack of response, he thinks, is even worse than the ghost noises. But for a moment, things almost feel right.

\---

There’s something deeply intimate about staring into your own chest wound.

Ghostbur wonders, sometimes, if Dad ever looks at his own. He’s sure that it probably scarred over just as badly as his own, even if he’d been respawned soon after unlike Ghostbur. Traumatic wounds like that don’t just heal up and let you forget about them.

_ Why does he know that? _

He frowns. That’s not the sort of information he usually goes searching around for, rattling around the fractured memories in his brain. Ghostbur rolls his shirt back down, tracing the jagged thing on his chest with his fingers, feeling the way it cools to his touch. He remembers the exact moment that scar had formed. He remembers with perfect clarity, with  _ joy,  _ in fact, the second his father’s face had stretched into grief, the moment the blade had entered his skin, so careful, so gentle. He thinks it might make his dad guilty to think about the day he’d turned Alivebur to Ghostbur, but he can’t quite understand why _. _

Ghostbur has Friend. Ghostbur has Tommy. Ghostbur has dad. Ghostbur has so much more than Alivebur ever had. The one thing he thinks he misses, sometimes, is the absence of an ache in his scar. There is nothing he can do to combat it, the occasional tightening, the phantom  _ crunch  _ of his sternum as dad had broken through the bone. 

But he thinks, with dad, with Tommy, that Alivebur didn’t know what he was missing by being dead. The ache in his chest is a small price to pay.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phil: aw we're so cute  
> Phil, through a mouthful of snow: I'm about to murder my other son
> 
> Tommy: Ghostbur shut the fuck up challenge  
> Tommy: oh fuck oh fuck please Ghostbur I will tolerate you screaming forever just get away from that sheep
> 
> Ghostbur: hehe cool sheep  
> Ghostbur: Life was pain
> 
> \---
> 
> Strap your helmets on, folks, the next few chapters shall be a ride.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok- don't kill me for this chapter. It is very cliff-hangery. I know. I originally combined this chapter and the second one, but I feel like it just fucked with the impact! So have this, and hopefully it will be enjoyable! The next chapter is already written so you won't have to wait long at all to read it either way.
> 
> Warnings: Er... I don't think there are any?

“Yknow, I just  _ really like horses.” _

“I know, Will.”

“You should get a horse, Tommy! Like Techno!”

“Techno’s a bitch, Will.”

Fresh snow blankets Tommy’s shoulders as he makes his way back to the house. Locating the village he’d passed by when he first left home years ago had taken about an hour but was more or less a success. To his surprise, some of the villagers actually recognized him, passing along gifts and applauding him on his survival.

He now has a stack of clay, a half stack of roast pork, and several dozen emeralds more than he’d originally had resting in his inventory, along with a half-grin on his face. Their houses hadn’t changed in the slightest, all slanted roofs and half-patched creeper holes. It reminds him, in a way, of the communes that had once populated the world around him in 2b2t. The ones that had risen and fallen through his years, becoming kingdoms then burning to rubble. 

It gives him whiplash. Looking around, now, the land seems so  _ permanent.  _ There are wars and squabbles and fights, but Tommy is no longer forced to participate, lest he lose his life. Not unless he’s dragged in, kicking and screaming.

“But he had a horse!” Argues Wilbur, throwing a spectral hand, spotted in blue, up into the air. Then he hisses, remembering he’s supposed to be hiding under Tommy’s cloak while the snow dumps from the heavens, encapsulating the world in white. 

Wilbur may be taller than Tommy, forced to hunch if he doesn’t want to melt in the snow, but the cloak is far from too small to fit the both of them. He shrinks inside, holding the corner of the fabric like a child. “And- and we could go so much faster, Tommy!”

He remembers the first time he’d rode a horse. Someone had died in the coliseum and, by rights, their belongings had belonged to him. It’d been a spotted black and white thing, runes carved deep into its back that had never quite healed, helping it to go faster. Tommy’d wanted to kill it at first -- put it out of its misery, because even if he’d never had a soft spot for animals, he wasn’t needlessly cruel to them either -- but over time, he’d gotten fond of it. 

By the time he actually saw the need for transportation besides the wings on his back, entity speed-boost runes had been patched. The magic had been sealed and shut down, forcing people to either use the nether highway or normal-speed horses. 

He shakes his head down at his brother, smirking at the -- honestly kind of adorable -- look he’s given back.

“Horses  _ shit  _ everywhere! I don’t want to have to pick up- pick up horse poop every time I go for a walk, and I know that you  _ can’t.”  _ Wilbur looks mournfully down at his hands, incorporeal and translucent. They would be very bad hands for picking up poo. But Tommy is suddenly struck with an idea, grinning up into the trees as his brother looks at him, confused at the sudden twist in his emotion. “Ooo- oo- we could get a skeleton horse, though. No more  _ poo  _ Those are rare, too, we could flex it over all the dickheads on this entire server!.”

“Aw! I thought I was your only token dead companion!” Wilbur complains, pouting, stretching his cheeks downward with the flats of his palms, his eyes starting to look a little creepy with the way they slack. Tommy kicks him, snarling good-naturedly when his leg instead just hits his cloak, flying through the see-through bits of Wilbur’s chest. The ghost gains an affronted look, giving Tommy a horrified gasp and a moan. “Hey! Rude. We do not hit in this household!”

“Exactly,” Tommy responds, ignoring his brother’s goggle-eyed grin. “We  _ stab people!” _

_ “No!”  _ chastises Wilbur, along with a line of expletives. “Yknow, Tommy, I don’t think I like this sort of behavior much!”

Tommy rolls his eyes under his armored mask-helmet, the metal sustaining snowflakes for a few seconds before they melt off. But, then, Wilbur slides out from under the cloak, diving through the trees before Tommy can move. He curses -- he can already see his brother’s skin start to weep -- and shouts his name, going sprawling after him.

“Wilbur! You fuckin’ prick, get back here!” Tommy actually  _ laughs  _ as he chases after his brother, ignoring the slap of leaves against his face. It’s been a long time since he’s been able to love his brother, been able to interact with him past the delusional rambling of a lunatic to an empty, uncaring mask. 

His wings twitch out behind him as he comes to a clearing not far from his house, preparing to fly up and catch his brother before he can totally fall apart. 

Something hot and sharp and painful erupts in his bones.

It digs into the barely healed wing at his left, then tugs back out, yanking him backward as he lets out an undignified squawk. Suddenly, humor turns to panic, then to rage, as he turns around to see someone’s fishing rod flying in his direction. He catches it in his hand the second time it comes his way, only to feel the sharp edges dig right through the palm of his hands. He’s not wearing his gauntlets. He’d thought when he left, that his helmet and chestplate would be enough.

Evidently not, he thinks, as the enchanted purple of the rod comes flashing out from between the leaves. He spins just as it clips his side, tucking it between the layers of his chestplate and beneath the metal, latching it to his body. 

He grins victoriously when the rod tugs at the metal, but stays, unable to rip out and back through his skin. That grin slips when an extraordinary strength yanks  _ him  _ forward instead, sending him slamming to the ground so hard the air is knocked from his lungs.

Not his best bit of foresight, he thinks.  _ Get up get get up!  _ Scream the voices.  _ Dumb stupid let’s go get out get up! _

He finds himself surrounded by foliage and shadowed figures, vulnerable as he lies on the ground and scrabbles for purchase in the dirt. Tommy leaps up the moment they stop pulling on him, ripping the fishing hook out of his armor and crushing it under his boots. It wiggles, there, for a moment, before it goes still.

Then, barely before he can react at all, he’s being pushed back, slammed into a tree, and narrowly folding his wing up against it. His back makes an uncomfortable cracking nose where it hits the bark, his hands coming up to clutch at the hand encircling his neck,  _ frighteningly  _ strong. Their hands are like claws, their strong, muscular figure revealing themselves with a snarl. 

Tommy’s legs kick uselessly as he swings there, held up by someone aided by strength that is clearly not just human in origin. He gurgles at the cut of his breathing, then aims a heavy kick right to the crotch of the figure. Then, with a move practiced for years, he whips his sword right out of his inventory, cutting a deep gash into the side of whoever it is he faces.

The person gasps. He strikes out again, only to realize he’s neglected his other opponents. Glass shatters against his arm, a potion bottle glowing green as its liquid scatters across his chest. For a moment, nothing happens, the liquid setting into his skin. He takes this moment to fight back, crouching low and taking out the legs of another with a practiced sweep. 

Then- something within him  _ jerks.  _ His feet stumble and twist into each other as his chest turns to flame, poison clearly their dirty trick of choice. Someone kicks him in the side and he doubles over, breath leaving as an awful  _ agony  _ wraps around his bones, feeling like his skin is being melted from his muscle, his sanity draining with it. But, with a small spark of fury, he manages to grab their leg. They gasp as he drags them closer, reveling in the  _ thud  _ they make as their body hits the dirt. Tommy’s overwhelmed with pain a moment later as another spasm of poison hits him, and he shouts, pained and frightened. 

_ Blood blood blood- _

He stands, somehow, raising his sword with a great burst of fury and adrenaline. His pain fuels him, his wing tugged along for the ride, his chest wracked with great, awful twitches, his entire body slamming into trees and ripping holes through the air as he swings blindly. 

The flame of his blade strikes meat and someone screams, an inhuman, mechanical thing that rips through Tommy’s skull. They go stumbling backward with another great sob, like gears grinding to a stop, an avalanche of noise. Tommy falls with them, clutching his side with his free hand as his legs give out.

_ “-anboo!”  _ Someone screams, though their words swim in Tommy’s ears, a grunt slipping out as someone’s boot plants onto his chest. Another awful, jagged pain rips through him, and his back arches off the ground, something like a mix of a cough and a groan wrenched from deep within him. Whoever it is on his chest doesn’t expect it when he moves, clearly, because he manages to throw them off a moment later. He slips into his inventory as quick as he can, hands --  _ bloody fingers, why are they bloody? --  _ shaking as they grip his items. 

The End Crystal detonates the second he sets it down. 

His ears ring, a hot, harsh twitch to his breath, body still spasming wildly around as he scrabbles for purchase on the ground with his shield. He starts to lift himself, ribs aching, protesting, only to feel a heavy weight on his back, shoving him back down insistently.

“We’ve learned your tricks, Phoenix,” says the voice of his last living brother, dangerously close to his ear. Technoblade’s sword slides gently over Tommy’s neck, and he swallows, desperate to hold back the shivers that the poison is still putting him through lest it ends with his throat slit. “Now. Where is  _ Philza.” _

_ \--- _

Five minutes later, he’s starting to regret ever helping his brothers explode L’Manberg. Not because he wants Wilbur alive and here to help -- though his comfort would certainly be nice -- but because he thinks his  _ other  _ brother might’ve gotten a bit of  _ brain damage. _

“I said I don’t fucking  _ know!”  _ Tommy shouts, for what feels like the sixteenth time in the past five minutes. The poison has left his system, leaving him shivering, with a terrible ache as a side effect, adding on to his earlier wounds. 

But his captors must have  _ some  _ modicum of good sense -- they’ve slammed another couple weakness potions into his chest and bound his hands and legs, throwing him up onto the horse Wilbur must’ve been talking about earlier, just behind Techno. The only thing that isn’t absolutely soul-shaking in this situation is the fact that they haven’t taken off his mask. 

The other horses follow around as Techno drags him out of the forest. There’s Fundy, Wilbur’s son, Quackity -- who is apparently the fucking  _ President  _ now -- along with Techno, and an enderman hybrid he hasn’t met before.  _ That’s _ who he hit, which is unfortunate, seeing as the rest of the group seems to like them quite a bit. Their back has been sliced through and cauterized by his blade, their breathing labored as they hang their head over their horse. But he has no room to feel bad. 

Phil is in L’Manberg today. It’s the first time he’d wanted to go back since he got his new communicator, but apparently, he wanted to  _ genuinely  _ ask Tubbo for citizenship. Something about reconnecting with Technoblade, and telling his son about Wilbur’s ghost. Tommy’d tried to talk him out of it. It hadn’t felt safe yet, but Phil had promised with a smile and a nod of his hat that he’d be fine. The clearest thought in Tommy’s head, past weakness and poison and pain, is that he hopes that his father doesn’t break this one.

“Yknow, you tiny little freak, it was actually pretty easy to capture you!” Quackity says lightly, a sudden interruption to the swimming headache between Tommy’s ears. His voice is sickeningly jovial. He turns from his spot on his horse, grinning. 

It’s an eerie sort of smile, lip curling upward where his skin thickens into a scar. Tommy thinks -- and he might’ve felt guilty about it once before the man had kidnapped him -- with a thrill of triumph, that  _ he did that.  _ “Who woulda thought the famous Phoenix could get taken down by a pig with anger issues?”

_ “Shut up,”  _ hiss Tommy and his brother at once, neither clearly up for the president’s digs. But Quackity just raises his hands in surrender and chuckles, leaving Techno to turn back to Tommy and continue on his quest to make his younger brother as absolutely miserable as possible.

“If you tell us now, yknow, we might not have to be so severe in y’ punishment.” The piglin-hybrid twists his head over his shoulder and stares at Tommy. He focuses on the dark brown of the horse’s pelt rather than his brother’s face, so uncaring and harsh, instead preferring the rippling of the animal’s muscles as he moves. “You’ve attacked a government official, Phoenix, that’s another crime for the list.”

“Put it on my tab, dickhead,” he mutters. His wings, tied down to his back, get a smack for that. Blood continues to saturate the back of his clothes jostling of his wound and Tommy scowls, giving his brother another venomous look for his trouble. “Smacking me isn’t gonna make me answer sooner!”

“It’s kinda funny, though,” says Techno, shrugging. “I’d say you deserve it. You’ve been kind of an asshole, hm?”

_ “And so wh-“ _

A communicator beep interrupts him. It rings out, quite loud in the silence of the forest. Quackity looks down from his reins and slips his off his belt, peering at his message curiously. Then, when his eyes widen and his mouth splits into a grin, he laughs.

“What is it?” Croaks Ranboo, a heavy contrast to his president, slumped over and clearly exhausted. He sounds like he’s about to pass out. A rush of familiar energy fills Tommy as he remembers the thrill of  _ blood,  _ of how it feels to grief and kill and destroy with reckless abandon. Ranboo’s horse seems to be completely controlling its own movements at this point, and Tommy observes the ripple of its dabbled burgundy-white pelt with disinterest.

All thoughts of triumphant anarchism are stolen from him a moment later. “Tubbo’s found Philza,” says Quackity, voice a disbelieving, excited thing, jeering not far behind on his lips. There’s nothing mirthful in his eyes now, every bit of personality erased. Tommy hasn’t interacted with the man much since that first time they’d met, but the president before him is a far cry from the shirtless joker that had laughed in the face of a man about to murder his fiancé. “They’ve proceeded with the trial.”

“Oh?” Technoblade’s eyebrows quirk up in surprise -- Tommy stares into his expression for a long moment, trying desperately to see more than contempt for Phil and for Tommy in his eyes, only to be left with the same cold his elder brother has been exuding all this time. “And the verdict?”

“Ten days house arrest at your house, Tech. Seems the stockades are full.” The burst of laughter that Quackity gives them is cruel, sharp, and high, with no humor to it. He leans over his horse and whistles slow and long, gripping the reins with renewed vigor. “I’m  _ excited.” _

The boat ride to L’Manberg, with all the horses and all the kings ( _ presidents _ ) men, would’ve taken around two days. Tommy feels a rush of anger when they come up to a nether portal instead, so deep in the land that they’ve left the forest alone, coming up to the beach. There’s a path already constructed within, shoddy and shambling, meaning that they’ve intruded on he and Phils territory before. 

Sometimes, he misses 2b2t. He misses when he was known to be a threat, so imposing that no one dared try to attack him unless they were bloody  _ prepared. _

The horses nearly fall several times as they make their way through the miniature hellscape -- especially Technoblade’s, with how unbalanced Tommy’s wings make him. Honestly, falling off the horse and drowning in lava would be preferable to sitting here. 

So Tommy babbles the entire way across, determined to annoy his captors as much as he can, grinning at every clenched tongue and suppressing the winces whenever someone bangs him up for his snark. By the time they make it back to L’Manberg a vein has begun to pop in Techno’s temple, his fangs grinding against each other in a  _ very  _ satisfying display of immaturity.

The purple of the portal bursts stars of purple in Tommy’s vision. He winces at the pressure and temperature change, hands flexing in their binding, the sudden sunlight outside making him shut his eyes in an attempt to adjust. The last time he’d been in L’Manberg was to usher in its destruction, and being back -- with its burning sun, its rubble-coated roads, its walls, is not as desirable as one might think.

“So,” he says, making Techno flinch in the seat of his saddle. “What sorta punishment ‘ave I got, lads? Torture? Death? Oooo- house arrest like Phil? Do I have to- oh  _ god,  _ don’t tell me I’ve gotta stick with the blade for days!”

“Gag him,” says Quackity without hesitation, making Tommy shut his mouth in an instant. 

“Wh- what? Wait- hey hey-” the voices aren’t even there to guide him now, eerily quiet, as Techno slips off his horse, grabbing a long strip of cloth from his satchel. The man comes round the side as Tommy starts to struggle, wings straining and eyes going wide. 

He kicks and bucks, but it’s futile -- the weakness potion they’ve dosed him with is  _ strong.  _ Technoblade’s fingers slip under the bottom of his mask, thumbs brushing his jaw, and Tommy flinches, a rough gasp wrenching from his jaw like a blade, so sharp he wishes desperately it would  _ cut- _

This is his brother, standing here with an indifferent expression, about to remove the last part of Tommy’s dignity he retains, tied to a horse with heavy limbs and completely vulnerable for the first time in years. Tommy hopes and prays to  _ anyone  _ in the sky that his death will at least be a swift one as he squeezes his eyes shut, panting, waiting for his mask to be tossed to the side.

But the metal stops just over the top of his mouth. Technoblade whistles as he catches the white of Tommy’s scars, but doesn’t make a move to remove his helmet otherwise, shoving a finger into Tommy’s mouth to yank his jaw open and tying the cloth in before the boy can bite. Tommy can’t fucking  _ breathe,  _ but his mask covers his distinguishing features, the fabric quickly wrenched around the back of his head and ending there. For a moment, he considers revealing himself. Perhaps, then, he’d be able to make amends. To explain why he had done what he’d done, back in L’Manberg, when it had been more than craters.

But his mask is replaced only a moment later, the gag in place. He is left to breathe, heavily, into the cloth scratching against his teeth, clawing at his tongue, drying his lips. He can’t  _ breathe. _

He takes in his surroundings, taken by a heavy haze of panic. He’s being tugged up a path, still on horseback, towards a more rebuilt-looking part of the city. There are houses, a smaller iteration of the White House, people milling about in a makeshift tent market, oblivious to the battle raging in his head. 

Tommy’s mouth is as dry as the sun as they make it towards the half-constructed, gleaming marble of the White House. A long wooden platform has been erected outside, a cramped metal cage standing in the middle, only feet away from a podium. The iron bars glint dangerously.

Tommy has been in enough firefights in his life to know what this is. A public execution. And this time he’s the one on the chopping board.

If he’d not wanted to talk to his brother before, he sure as hell wants to now. Tommy chokes down his pride (and quite a bit of spit) against his gag, starting to struggle again. The weakness potion is starting to wear off, anyway, and he uses this to his advantage, squirming and kicking at Technoblade’s horse. 

The man looks over and scowls, ignoring the muffled words of his captive and digging back into his satchel. Another weakness potion slams into Tommy’s back and he groans, knocking his head back into the saddle in frustration. His limbs feel endlessly heavy, pliable, and weak as they bounce slowly up and down with the rhythm of the horses’ movement. Tommy is going to die today, at the hands of a brother he will never,  _ ever  _ be able to make amends with. Tommy is going to die  _ today. _

_ Fuck. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wilbur: Techno has a cool horse.  
> Tommy: Ok  
> Tommy: Oh nice that's Techno's horse  
> Tommy: Wait why is Techno's horse here-
> 
> Techno: Man this isn't personal but... You're annoying as shit  
> Tommy, fist pumping: Yessssssssss I am
> 
> \---
> 
> I wanna say real quick: Techno is not fully aware of what the Butcher's army is meant to do. Not like in canon. He doesn't want Tommy dead. in fact, he really couldn't care less if he went unpunished by L'Manberg anyways. He doesn't see it as that big of a deal since Wilbur had pretty much destroyed everything so Tommy/Phoenix didn't do that much damage. In his eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all- This is almost at 1000 kudos??? And 300 comments??????? What??????????????????? You guys are AMAZING. I'm serious- the support for this fic is beyond anything I could've imagined, and I'm so thankful!
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: Yknow that funky little "graphic depictions of violence" tag? Yeah. That comes heavily into play in this chapter. Some very visceral descriptions of gore and violence. If anyone needs me to I can tell them what happens so they don't have to read through it all. If you want to skip the bulk of it, don't read from "The bolt is gone from his weapon before he can even" and "When Phil had watched"  
>    
> Anyways: Don't forget I have a [tumblr!](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/soupsword)
> 
> (Fanart for this chapter! By [Elms-art-gallery](https://elms-art-gallery.tumblr.com/post/645431744019955712/quick-and-shitty-comic-for-soupsword-s-fic) )

Technoblade thinks that there is something intimately familiar with the panic in Phoenix’s voice when he unmasked the man. He has had his own moments where all he could rely on were a mask, covering his expressions, his fear. That’s why he leaves it on. Phoenix, despite his crimes, had fought with Techno and his brother for L’Manberg, and he respects that. He will make sure the man stays his trial and accepts his punishment, but he will not remove the final layer of protection he relies on.

He can see Phil up on the balcony of his home. Techno’s father’s expression is fuzzy and out of focus from the distance between them, but he can see, sure as day, the anxiety in the man’s wings, shuffling and reshuffling behind him. When Quackity and his  _ butcher army  _ climb up to the White House, Phil freezes, suddenly throwing the whole weight of his body against the shackles on his legs as he sees their cargo.

Maybe he’d gotten fond of Phoenix, in their time together. Techno can’t quite bring himself to care, past the dull ache of longing within him. If his father wants to replace his sons with another, he may. That doesn’t mean Technoblade will take the indignity lying down, a pig in a sty. 

A small audience has amassed in wait for the trial. There are the greater members of the Dream SMP -- Dream, Sapnap, George, Eret not far away, Jschlatt lounging around on the ground and clearly waiting for the drama to start. Sam, Foolish, and Puffy all stand together, bored of the whole affair already, if their chatter and rolled eyes are anything to go by. Bad and Skeppy talk animatedly with Antfrost, the three of them too distracted to bother at all. There are many more sitting around, but it is clear the most important spectator is Dream, the orchestrator himself.

Tubbo comes leaping off the platform and running their way. His face has a gentle smile upon it -- till it doesn’t, as Ranboo and Techno’s bloodstained forms come into view. The piglin-hybrid in question huffs a sigh through his tusks as the boy immediately gains a hyper-worried expression.

“Ranboo!” Tubbo gasps, helping to steady the taller boy as he slides off the horse, groaning into his friend’s shoulder. The enderman-hybrid clutches his side in an attempt to reach his back, the great slash cut into it. Tubbo may be much shorter than his friend, but Ranboo leans up against him as if he’s the last thing holding him up. “Holy shit- did Phoenix do that?”

“Just add it to the charges,” says Quackity gleefully, smacking his hands together with a manic glint to his eyes. He leaps off his horse and onto the ground with one last wrench of the reins, butcher’s apron fluttering in the early spring wind. “We have a  _ trial  _ to get on!”

It’s odd, the expression that Tubbo shoots Phoenix at Quackity’s demands. Despite the wound on Ranboo’s back, given by the subject of Tubbo’s scrutiny, he looks almost worried, eyes and brow twisted with questions that, doubtlessly, will go unanswered. Techno had seen them grow close through their time working together, but he had never seen the extent of it. Never seen what makes Tubbo hesitate, now, to put what is undeniably a friend on trial.

There’s no time for speculation now. Phoenix lets out what are clearly expletives through his gag as Techno loops an arm around his stomach, yanking the man up off the horse and across his own shoulder. The wings flush to his back strain against the ties around them, but Techno just leans his head out of the way, thankful for the weakness potion they’d dosed the legend with as his legs barely muster up the strength to kick with.

They leave the horses with Ranboo and Tubbo, the two of them eyeing the stage with looks suddenly bordering on wary. Qauckity climbs up first, waving down at his audience with a smile; then up to Phil with a  _ grin.  _ Techno follows, ignoring the way that Phoenix’s struggling has become even more frantic, his words louder. The plates of his armor dig into Technoblade’s back, but he does not relent, peering down into the crowd impassively. The heavy thud of his hooves against the wooden path is enough to drown out the odd, distorted noise of his prisoner. 

“Hello? Hello, can everyone hear me?” 

Quackity makes a big show of flicking the microphone in front of him, coughing into it as his face starts to split into an ever more triumphant grin. He grips the sides of the wooden podium and scans the crowd, winking enigmatically over at Technoblade. Wind, the fair day whistling through the air, tousles through his hair and into the open air. “For far too long, we of L’Manberg have been plagued by threats! Threats of destruction. Of insurgence. Of  _ betrayal.  _ I have with us today one of the largest purveyors of those crimes in our  _ history!” _

He flings his arm to the side and waves it at Techno, at the prisoner sprawled across his back. Phoenix starts to struggle harder. Techno doesn’t even flinch. The crowd begins to watch.

“Please move the prisoner to the ex- to the  _ trial chambers,  _ Techno.”

He obeys, though with caution, narrowing his eyes at the slip of Quackity’s words. The president just stares back, arm still out, chest heaving with overzealous excitement behind his bloodstained suit and apron. Phoenix’s only attempt to escape as he is shoved between the iron bars of his cage is a flick of his head, left and right, searching for someone. His body shakes and heaves with what Techno assumes is adrenaline, as the door slams shut behind him.

(He pretends to ignore as Phoenix’s mask lands on Phil. He pretends to ignore how much it hurts, knowing that Phil cares, not for him, but for an enemy.)

“Er- how are we supposed to have a trial if he’s gagged, Mr. President?”

All the heads swivel. Techno nods in agreement at Fundy, the young fox-hybrid wringing his hands where he stands behind Quackity, clearly uncomfortable with the sudden scrutiny. Techno can’t quite suppress the urge to go and shove him off the stage. Not in a cruel way -- he just doesn’t believe Fundy should be involved with politics at all. He’s a child, and shouldn’t be forced to witness the destruction of his father’s dead dreams. But no matter - their president whistles and nods emphatically.

“Good question,” Quackity says in a  _ low,  _ theatrically mysterious voice. He unclasps his palms from the podium and rubs them together, sneering. “What use is there for a trial, when you already know the criminal’s charges, Fundy?”

The hybrid hesitates, eyes darting between Phoenix -- looking at him now too, with every other head in the crowd -- and Quackity, and once, up to Phil. “Uhm… fairness? Freedom?”

And Quackity  _ scoffs.  _

Something like anger starts to bubble in Technoblade’s chest at such clear disregard for his brother’s ideals. No matter how corrupted they’d become, they’d been an essential part of L’Manberg, a remnant of his only family left. 

“Those are  _ empty promises,  _ Fundy.” Their President’s voice has changed. It no longer holds anything like mirth -- not even the sinister, manic humor that touches his tone at every chuckle -- cold and sinuous as the spine of a snake. The hairs on the back of Techno’s neck bristles, and he looks at Quackity with sudden alarm. “We must deal with threats as effectively and swiftly as possible.”

This is  _ not  _ what Technoblade had been volunteered for. 

His eyes widen as the implications of Quackity’s call set in. 

This was never intended to be a fair trial -- no jury rule, no prison nor house arrest nor community service to keep the executioner's block from seeing blood -- was it?

Technoblade suddenly understands on a much deeper level the struggle Phoenix has put on -- the one he still dances to, writhing in his bondage, legs swinging out and thudding uselessly against his cage.

Techno looks up to his father and sees  _ terror. _

Then he’s back to facing Quackity once again, watching in slow motion as murmurs break out below them and Fundy lets out a foxes  _ yip  _ of a gasp and an execution begins in place of a trial. The president is undeterred by the confusion, and Techno gulps down the call for blood in his chest.  _ He can’t move yet,  _ he reasons, even as the voices shout at him.  _ He can’t lose this waiting game. He can’t- _

His hand moves to his crossbow, buried deep in his inventory. His fingers curl about it with a prepared surety he hadn’t realized was inside of him.

Quackity is shouting, continuing on his tirade. But so is someone else -- over the low rumble of the crowd, the noise of Phoenix’s movements. Techno can barely hear them over the low roar erupting in the people beneath his hooves -- protests and cheers alike -- and he strains, eyes and ears flickering around in circles as he tries to find the source. 

Then-

_ “Techno!”  _ Screams his father, the voice singled out above everything the moment it becomes clear, deafening around the quiet of everything else as it becomes prioritized. Techno’s hand is already on his crossbow, pulled up from his inventory and into the air as he tries to decide --  _ are his brother’s ideals really worth it? Is Phoenix worth this fight? Does he deserve it?  _

Phil is strangled and hoarse, though, and his attention shifts back to his father, away from his weapon and his musings, the man sounding as if he’s been calling for hours, not minutes, arms and legs straining around his shackles. Deep creases of worry scar his face. His hat falls, floating down in the wind and onto the ground.  _ “Technoblade!” _

He squints, far up into the balcony of his home, into the eyes of a man who hasn’t cared whether Techno lives or dies since he was a child, right as Quackity reaches under his podium with a victorious laugh.

“He’s your  _ brother!”  _ Phil says, and for a moment, Technoblade doesn’t understand.

_ “It’s Tommy!”  _

The beat of his heart stills as the waves of each word flow across him. Techno stares blankly up into the balcony, his expression lost, his mind unable to process. His father’s face is desperate in a way he thinks he has never seen, white and pale and with his mouth stretched open wide, frantic  _ shouting  _ falling out. Technoblade can’t quite feel his hand, as it wraps around the crossbow in the other and loads it, a bolt steady against his fingers, rod thin. He can’t quite feel anything, really, as a steady tsunami of blood rushes past his ears, stampeding across his brain.

The bolt is gone from his weapon before he can even feel himself shoot. Syrupy, sweet,  _ red  _ pours from the hole that erupts in Quackity’s skull, between his ears and below his hair and right into his eye, now splattered with blood. Techno can’t quite tell -- is the crowd so loud, screaming so angrily, that’s he’s lost all sense of hearing? Or is it the rush in his bones, the horrible,  _ awful  _ understanding that floods him? The feeling of his skull collapsing under the weight of its knowledge? 

His feet are rushing forward as his vision goes fuzzy. Someone still screams, though their voice is shattered, bits of porcelain vocal cords flying through the air and shredding every bit of Techno that there is left.

Dream drops like a sack of potatoes as Techno’s bolt severs his throat from his lungs, a hand clutching at the spurt of blood the moment he dies, the moment his body begins to fade. George and Sapnap are dispatched just as swiftly, the world erupting into chaos as someone with the same hands as Techno takes over, eyes glazed, teeth bared into a snarl that he cannot feel, truly more animal than human. Someone is screaming, with a voice like heartbreak, like a charred garden where more than one corpse lies, like closets where one might bury themselves under the weight of every bone of every body in the world. 

And, through it all, though the slow-motion actions that lead to the death of the crowd, through the dropping of bodies and the red flooding Techno’s vision, he knows-

_ He is not fast enough. _

Tommy’s body erupts into gore with a sickening  _ crunch,  _ limbs severing and blood coating the ground. His skull goes first, and Techno cannot see the look in his eyes as his spine folds. Anvils pile atop his ruined body and no one can hear anything but Phil as he  _ screams. _

Then, with color like starlight, green- green flashing, gold billowing up- particles of it going everywhere- blood and insides and brutality marked in silver, only shades lighter than the sun-

There is a man, unidentifiable, masked, standing on top of the anvils, and he is _ - _

Tommy’s face becomes clear as Technoblade’s brother wrenches off his mask, a specter of death, appearing on top of a discarded pile of splintered bone and squelching blood. His face is torn by scars and years, no more youthful than Techno’s own, a grin both his own and that of a long-sealed cut tearing up into his cheeks.

_ “Wankers!” _

Tommy screams with an unsteady voice, a specific finger coming up on either hand. 

Then powerful wings, no longer tied down, raised, haloing Techno’s brother --  _ dead, dead years ago, dead now, and dead forever --  _ like awful, bloody weapons, pushing up and lifting Tommy as if he is  _ weightless.  _ He feels himself being shoved down to one knee, as he stares into the sky, seeing his brother laughing into the sun, an Icarus that refuses to burn.

Techno launches himself up off the ground and scatters the arms currently shoving him towards it. His eyes are coated in  _ blood,  _ his veins pounding with the desperate need for it, the desire to place his mouth to a body and dig his fangs in, ripping meat and blood and arteries apart until only a painting of smashed bones and desecrated organs remains on the ground. Someone screams where his sword lands, but he just runs, hooves casting across the wood and then down swiftly onto the ground, watching Tommy with every moment. The dirt meets his limbs as he lands, running the moment he’s up. The entire crowd chases him, but he has eyes only for the unmasked figure high above, as Techno runs to his horse and begs the God of Blood that he will be able to make it out of his chase alive.

Techno picks up Phil’s hat off the ground, and he  _ runs _ .

—-

When Phil had watched Wilbur die, it had been the most agonizing thing he had ever participated in for his entire life. To have committed such an act as driving his own blade through Wilbur’s chest had been unthinkable, something that he’d barely even understood he’d done until he’d already been screaming, until he’d already been run through and killed himself. 

When Phil watches Tommy die... Something foul and violent saturates his ribs.

Then, with a flash of green and yellow, his son is  _ alive,  _ standing on top of a pile of anvils with a victorious -- though shaken -- expression. The desperate, terrified scream Phil had been about to let out clogs his throat, choked down when Tommy’s eyes immediately fall upon him, wings and arms and legs tugged down to the ground with iron chains. The crowd below is  _ pandemonium,  _ but Phil only has vision for his son, ignoring the crossbows and swords and bows as weapons and blows are traded across the dozens of citizens below. Tommy goes invisible as well, as his wings billow out, Techno the new target of the crowd, their Phoenix abandoned to take to the skies. 

_ “Dad!”  _ Shouts Tommy, and Phil thinks it might be the most amazing thing he has ever heard. Tommy lands on the balcony and laughs out something choked and triumphant all at once, throwing his arms around Phil’s chest, stunned into silence and inaction, bowling his father onto the ground. They land in a pile of boney limbs. Tommy lets out a sob and tucks his chin into Phil’s neck, clawing for purchase at the back of his robes.

When Phil had been taken in, chained to the ground in Technoblade’s house, he had seen the cage below him and immediately known what was to ensue. 

But his son is  _ alive. _

He is breathing, chest heaving with adrenaline against Phil’s own, wings curling around the two of them.

In an instant, Phil is clutching him back, tearing through the air as he pulls his son close, throat run ragged as he puts a hand to Tommy’s back, the other resting in the unruly nest of his hair. His wings, unable to move for the bonds holding them down, strain desperately to reach their younger counterpart, black reaching for blood red. 

“You’re alive,” Phil finds himself gasping, in disbelief just as much in joy. “You’re  _ alive, _ mate- ”

“I’m  _ alive!”  _ Tommy repeats, before he leans back from the hug. He crawls off of Phil and gasps, laughing through a sob. “Holy  _ shit-  _ I didn’t even know if that would work anymore? Aye- immortality must be in me- in me fuckin  _ blood,  _ man! Tommyinnit never  _ dies!” _

“Was- was that a totem?” Says Phil, only distantly registering his own limbs as he sits up. Tommy extends a hand and he takes it gratefully, standing and watching with uncertainty as his son goes shoving through drawers and cupboards in an attempt to find something to break the chains holding Phil to the house.

“Yup- yep, yep yep,” mutters Tommy, finally finding a hammer, rusty and  _ clearly  _ not typically used for breaking magically charged chains. Large holes dig into the floorboards where Tommy slams it down, wrenching up the metal as if it’s butter, the aftereffects of the Totem clearly still hitting him. Someone pounds on the door -- which Phil had the good sense to barricade as soon as they’d tied him down -- and he leans over to help, yanking on the chains until the links themselves start to break. “Oh  _ god  _ oh  _ shit  _ dad we’ve gotta go we’ve gotta go  _ now-“ _

“I know- I know, let’s just go-“

There’s a large bang as people behind the door continue to punch at it insistently. Then, there’s a massive  _ jerk  _ and a screech of metal as the last chain comes up. Tommy throws the hammer into the wall for good measure, leaving a massive dent as the metal plants itself into the  _ stone.  _ Phil and his son laugh in tandem, high, shrieky things, eyes wide in disbelief. But then they’re off, racing to the rails of the balcony and climbing atop.

“Watch out for bow fire,” Phil says, as he starts to pump his wings, stretching the aching limbs.

“S’ not my first rodeo, old man,” Tommy says, though his voice is fond, and they launch from the home together, gaining wind as they rise. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Techno: Hm. I kinda feel bad for Phoenix jail sucks  
> Techno: Wait what are you doing with those anvils
> 
> Quackity: I AM THE DIVORCED HOT MEN IN YOUR AREA  
> Quackity: NO THIS ISN'T A SCAM I'M NOT A MURDERER I PROMISE
> 
> Tommy: Wh. What. I'm about to die  
> Tommy, remembering that he died several times over in 2b2t but still survived: Nvm I'm a genius
> 
> Phil:  
> Phil, having a heart attack: I fucking hate this government
> 
> \---
> 
> YOOOO I didn't leave y'all on a big cliffhanger this time! Hooray! Everyone remembers those first two chapters, focusing specifically on Tommy and Phil individually? Well, maybe if you're lucky, Techno shall receive the same treatment. It's about time. I love that asshole pig.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOAH- Y'all were uh. Very big fans of the last chapter?????? Holy cow??????????? Thank you so so much for the support, as always!!!
> 
> BIG NEWS! MORE FANART! This time from the absolutely fantastic [Elms-art-gallery on Tumblr!](https://elms-art-gallery.tumblr.com/post/645431744019955712/quick-and-shitty-comic-for-soupsword-s-fic) It's a little comic of the endnotes in the last chapter, and I fucking love it so hard omfgdghsdkfjghkjfkjbjhddfmcx thank you so much again!! (I will also post the link on the chapter it corresponds with, but I'll leave my fan behavior here so there isn't too much amazed ranting everywhere in my notes.

When Technoblade left his home, hand in hand with Wilbur -- looking back only once, grinning -- he had felt anxious. He’d grown up with books illustrating war, and fame, and violence, but he had taken the information in a light far contrasting that of his brother’s ideals. 

Techno, born partly of piglin blood, lineage washed in red, had not craved that battle. That fame. He had framed those texts of his childhood as tales of caution, constantly doomed to be repeated as time resets, over and over. Wilbur, in turn, had seen them as stories. With morals, fables, and ideas of greatness. Things and people to look at with adoration. He’d seen Icarus learn to fly; Techno had witnessed the fall.

But, Techno would not allow himself to abandon his brother over worry. So he’d followed him out of that door, out of the lives of his father, of his tiny brother. They’d camped out in the forest for a week, pouring through those same myths of their childhood. Wilbur had started sketching out the barest of details for his new land the moment he’d walked out of the door. Techno, on the other hand, had watched, fondly, and waited, sharpening his weapons and preparing to heed the cautions of every book he’d ever read.

And to his surprise, things started out alright. The new ruler of the land the two had lived adjacent to all their lives had been quiet but democratic, allowing them in with only a small set of rules to follow. And for a time, things were quiet, and Techno could write his concerns off as paranoia. 

Then, of course, because nothing can  _ ever  _ stay normal for long in real life or stories alike, Techno got sent to jail.

It had been for completely arbitrary reasons, too. He’d picked up a bucket with some fish in it -- abandoned in the bottom of a chest -- looked at it for a moment or two, and then been immediately attacked.He Instead of allowing himself to have his throat slit over a bucket of fish, he’d turned, drawing his sword and rushing straight into a fight. George had fought back valiantly, refusing to explain the source of his sudden aggravation, and he’d begged for mercy by the time Techno was done. He’d granted it. 

A fight too late, though, as Dream had swooped in only a moment later, impassively joyful mask stood over his lackey’s bleeding form. Techno had been thrown right into the stockade the moment he’d sheathed his sword.

Wilbur’d broken him out only horse later. Wilbur, his faithful older brother, with a grin and a silver pickaxe, who hadn’t even seen the fight, known the reason. They’d run off together on one of Sapnap’s horses and ended up being chased out of the Dream SMP, chased through several other worlds before they were safe. And they’d traveled long and far in this interlude, fighting new enemies and making new allies. 

But Wilbur would never be satisfied with this nomadic lifestyle, and Technoblade had been forced to admit, he never would be either. They’d traveled back to the SMP after years past, not hearing anything but vague, dark rulers of the land they’d left behind. Wilbur had unrolled his old plans and unfurled a map, feverishly working to start his own world, a place to escape from the prosecution he had once faced. 

_ L’Manberg. _

An utterly ridiculous name for an absolutely ridiculous ruler. Techno hated it. He’d loved his brother, though, so he’d followed his call like a knight of old, all netherite and diamonds and a bloodline sodden with power. Wilbur had his destiny, as clear as a summer’s night, to rule. Techno had his own. To battle as he’d pleased.

The stars in the sky on that night had been full and bright, dying things millions of years away from them. They’d already seen Wilbur and Techno’s destinies centuries ago, already aware of how their days would end. They had shined down on Techno and his brother with light spreading in tendrils as tired eyes, unfocused, had drifted shut. 

The two of them slept in a burlap rag of a tent with only Techno’s cloak for warmth, backs weighing them down to the dirt floor, their mattress. Those stars, the same as the ones Techno walks under today, feel impossibly changed.

The forest he travels through is dense with foliage and mobs, only narrowly avoided by a dance of movement he thinks he should really be too exhausted to keep up for long. The sun that had bathed the world in warmth not a few hours ago has disappeared, leaving the earth beneath his hooves to be washed in blue instead. The barest hints of moonlight shine against him when the foliage splits, but he does not look up, does not stare his life in its eyes just to be met with starlight.

Techno has been walking for hours. His hands are soaked in blood, red crusted over, so every movement of his knuckles has it cracking up and flaking down onto the leaves beneath him. The bandage across the gouge in his side is no longer effective, material instead chafing the cut and spreading his scent all across the land he tracks. It stains his shirt, turning his cloak an ever deeper shade of burgundy than before.

The crossbow that had killed his (the) president is still clutched in his fist. The hands that had strung the arrow had not been his own, but there they sit, shivering and thin, attached to slender wrists, swinging at his side.

The voices are silent. There is no way to intrude when they are the ones in control. Techno’s legs mechanically drive him forward until he is physically unable to walk, and then he falls, and he knows no more.

In the morning he’s awoken by something sliding out of his hands. Actual alarm floods him -- not that of the voices, but of Techno’s  _ own --  _ and he snaps up from the dirt in an instant, grabbing the thing moving Phil’s hat from his fist in a grip that snaps its bones.

Techno looks down. The bird he’s just yanked off the ground is cold and dead, its spine distended where it has broken. Its wings remind him too much of-

He drops it as fast as he’d killed it. His hand reattaches itself to the brim of his father’s hat, and he stands, starting to stretch his aching limbs. Neither his weapon nor the hat leaves his fists, as he raises his arms over his head and then down to his hooves, cracking his neck back and forth with a huff. The person who had killed his (the) president had not  _ really  _ been him --  _ denial is a powerful motivator,  _ the voices croon, but he stays out of earshot -- though he remembers the actions regardless, and he has no doubt that the entirety of L’Manberg will be on his trail.

Those that are left alive, Techno thinks, chuckling. He rubs a bloody knuckle across his chin. He needs a shave. The sun has risen all the same as yesterday. It’s not as bright or hot as the day before, overcast by the clear beginnings of a rainstorm, smelling of petrichor and smoke, but it has returned all the same. Techno is suddenly aware that before it had appeared, he hadn’t been sure it would at all.

_ Where are you going?  _ Ask the voices.  _ Where can we go? _

“I don’t know,” Techno tells them. They buzz in the background with questions he has no answer to, and he ignores them as best he can, rubbing his fingers back and forth across a green stripe on Phil’s hat monotonously. He thinks, with a hollow sort of dread in his chest, like a bullet lodged in a wound, too far away to feel in full force, that the understanding of the blood’s (his) actions might hit soon. But he just hums, as if it doesn’t affect him at all.

That first day passes in a blur of dissociated, fuzzy, memories. He can vaguely remember plunging his hands deep into a pile of muddy leaves and wiping blood from his skin as best as he can. He sees himself putting on Phil’s hat as his hands move of their own accord, feeling a bit stupid (and maybe a bit like he wants to punch something with the grief of it all) but overall happier that he has one less burden to carry. He remembers least what the voices whisper. What they asked, spoken of, recalled up in fragmented imaging. The things that had been drawn to his mind.

Blood and gore, a staple in his diet. Murder and death and killing, routine as breathing, a necessary not-exactly-evil. Shouting and screaming and horror. Those things, so intimately familiar and warm within, chilled and empty as they’d been superimposed upon a brother he’d thought had burned years ago. 

Through the days, he doesn’t hunt, relying instead on the foraging skills that he’d peacefully employed not long ago. Mushrooms and dandelions and berries and bugs. He eats with the detached interest of a prisoner being fed their final meal. He feels it, too, every moment waiting for the world to fall apart and reveal that he has been executed for his crimes already.

His hair, pink and long and tangled now, with leaves and twigs, goes red at the ends where the juice of berries sprays into it. 

Techno hasn’t lived in the wilderness since years passed, and he has  _ never  _ done so without Wilbur by his side. He thinks, now, in the first moments of relaxation that he has experienced in almost a decade, he hasn’t really ever mourned the death of his brother. It sits in the bottom of his chest like a rock sinking to the bottom of a lake, cold and oversized and overburdening.

Walking through the forest must awaken some long-dormant part of the earth, Techno thinks. There’s no natural explanation for the way he can feel his eldest brother’s spirit looming over him. Everything is foggy and quiet as if his consciousness has been pushed out of the way, both by himself and the voices that have cursed his bloodline for decades. He keeps the company of Wilbur’s corpse, just behind his eyelids.

Tommy, on the other hand, can no longer be relied on for want of something to mourn.

He chases down the taste of bile with river water on another day with the first stream he’s been able to locate. He drowns out the last remnants of old guilt, like a scab stuck to his flesh and ready to be peeled away, with the pain dug up as he washes off the red tattoo of blood on his wounded side. 

Techno has spent years with Tommy’s death as a motivator. Something cementing his ideals, keeping him from leaving his only remaining family member. He thinks, had Tommy still been alive, he might’ve left Wilbur in L’Manberg. It’s a selfish thought. He abandons it against the weathered pebbles at the bottom of the stream, soft under the bare peach-fuzz of his back. 

The garden in front of his childhood home had always been something beautiful. Like a picture out of one of his tamer storybooks, something his father would have read to him and Wilbur when they were young, perched on his two knees, and leaning their heads to his chest, laughing when he used a funny voice. It was more functional than beautiful, with only a few plots of flowers to be found. But lavender, sprawling grapevines, a rather homely area hollowed out for potatoes -- they all came together and made something lovely. Every bit of his and his brother’s work was complemented by the sprawling apple tree in the middle, planted by their father, generations ago. Its great and ancient roots had held the soil together and intertwined with that of the other plants. Techno had taken immense pride in his additions to the bit of earth, and in working with his family to cultivate it. 

When he’d returned home with his brother, -- right before they’d decided the world was cruel enough that it was only fair that they be so too -- before L’Manberg became a reality more than a goal, his eyes had immediately landed on the garden. 

The apple tree had been gnarled and scalded with flame, none of its fruits nor branches spared. It twisted up into the sky, shorter than before, like some awful beacon of death, rather than the caretaker it had seemed to be before, shade-giver turned shade itself. The grapevines, the lavender, had been turned to ash, ground about it all raised when Techno could still remember exactly where it had been. 

The potatoes, for some reason he couldn’t understand, had made his heart hurt the most. It was his bit of land, and it was dead. 

But, by far the worst sight, was that of an empty home.

Their father had left. He’d left Tommy alone as well, clearly, as the boy was nowhere to be seen, and the house was ransacked. The lighter thrown on the floor of his room -- messier than any before it, not his normal type of disarray, clearly destroyed with purpose and strength outside that of his own -- had been the final nail in his  _ literal  _ coffin. Techno and Wilbur walked into a home empty of even a  _ ghost _ , and had walked out with intentions about as warm as a corpse.

The wound on Techno’s side has not begun to heal. With a thought annoyingly poetic, he realizes that really, none of his wounds have. 

Tommy has been a cut festering at his back, something to reach into and pull apart when he needed any reason to fight, though too far away to bandage. 

Wilbur has been a quieting thing on his tongue, making his mouth hurt to open, making him think, plot and plan in his own mind rather than with anyone else -- seeing as after his brothers, he has had no one else to trust. 

His father is a wound inflicted by the man itself, a hand pressed just above Techno’s Adam’s apple and scalding there. It is something he looks into the mirror and is reminded of, his tusks and lips curling up in distaste at the angry red mark. Techno thinks he has been bubbling over with anger for a long time, but he is not his family. He is silent in his rage.

In the wilderness, he lets himself shout. It comes up like a great spat of vomit, puddling against the ground with an awful  _ squelch.  _ It echoes in his ears as he lets out a grunt and plants his knuckles into a tree, so quick and sudden he doesn’t even recognize the motion till his knuckles split and his adrenaline crashes into him. Techno draws an axe from his inventory and swings it with both his arms, letting it plant in the heavy bark of a tree with no care for scavenging material, purely out of anger. He wields a sword with a balanced figure, practicing sparring tactics that he’d been taught years ago. Sweat drips down his brow and into his eyes, his hair plastered to his forehead and flying into his face. 

In a fit of pure, unadulterated  _ hate _ , he takes his blade to his scalp and wrenches it through the hair upon it. It feels a bit melodramatic, later. But he can see better as he fights with an invisible opponent, the only strands in view now discarded on the ground. By the time night falls he can do nothing but collapse on the ground, chest heaving and clothes soaked in sweat and blood from his side. 

Eventually, his emotions cool. He’s hesitant to call it rage -- rage is what made him kill his (the) president not too many days ago -- but it simmers in the same way, boiling up, then down, into an evaporated puddle in the pit of his stomach. 

He looks into the rain with squinted eyes when he awakens to it in the morning. The storm that had been building for days finally hits, though its deepest anger clearly boiled over in his sleep. He wakes up in the morning to only a drizzle, though he is soaked and cold, and thunder rolls, far off in the distance. Techno counts the seconds between thunder and lightning and concludes that it is traveling away from him. 

But the low drizzle he slugs through stops somewhere around noon. He looks into a puddle and sees that his hair is barely to his chin, unruly and unflatteringly straight, curling just under his jaw. With a grimace and a flinch he pulls his blade right back out of his inventory.

Techno sits next to the puddle in silence. Phil’s hat sits on the ground next to him. He carves into his hair and lets fistfuls hit the mud, turning brown and dirty in moments. His haircut ends up being jagged and messy and loose, free about his pointed ears for the first time since he was seven. It’s something freeing, though he loathes to admit it. It does not make his travel any lighter, but it takes an edge from his peripheral vision, and that is enough. 

_ It’s just hair,  _ reason the voices.  _ But it looks nice. _

The wound on his side still hasn’t begun to heal, days after he receives it at the hands of a brother he hadn’t even known was still breathing. Techno thinks back to the day -- to the ambush, then the fight, the capture, the subsequent execution. 

He thinks about how he’d traveled with the Butcher’s Army in silence, the Butcher himself at the head, and he had trusted them. Techno remembers pressing the spasming flesh of Tommy’s neck to the tree, his brother under the mask and surely struggling to breathe. He thinks, most of all, of what might have been done differently, could he return.

But Techno has never been one for reminiscing for long. He continues on and talks to himself and the trees about stories and what comes to mind, humming old tunes and fiddling with the muddy brim of Phil’s hat. The animals do not bother him, and he does not hunt. 

He finds where his hooves have been dragging him after days of following their whims. He thinks he’s known the entire time, in the back of his mind, past even the last remnants of his dissociated consciousness, that he had been searching for his former home. 

Rain turns to snow and puddles turn to black-ice. He realizes, when he looks into the moon one day, now crescent, completely different than that day he’d left L’Manberg, that he has been in the wilderness for  _ days.  _ He’s taken the long way round to the old brick-and-stone structure of his childhood home, his body showing the signs of wear. But it seems he’s never really forgotten his way back.

“I need a nap,” Techno mutters, as he peaks through a clearing in the trees and sees smoke curling up into a familiar sky from a chimney that should be just the same. The garden has crumbled over the years he has neglected to visit, now flat and blanketed in snow, making way for a walkway to lead up to the front door. The windows exude only the barest bits of light, yellow coming from the living room and nowhere else. 

His breathing catches at that thought; as he realizes that he knows exactly which window leads into which room, despite the years gone by. There is a pile of fabric sitting on the ground not a few yards from the house, covered in snow and starting to rot. 

Technoblade turns away from the place and starts in the other direction.

No. No- he  _ will  _ not go back. He will not admit defeat to an enemy that doesn’t exist and a completely irrational war that he has never fought in. He makes up arguments and beats them down with an iron baseball bat, crude and angry. Deep in his mind he knows it’s guilt keeping him from knocking on that door, but he will deny it, covering it with stoic and quiet anger until the day he no longer can. 

But then night falls. And  _ oh,  _ he has forgotten how much he hates strays. 

Techno doesn’t knock right away. He stands on the front doorstep, staring at the wooden panels of the door, face unemotional and cold. His cloak floats off his back in the wind and his hands are hit with the chill of the snowy night, split knuckles burning where it starts to crack the skin of his hands. His fingers curl, and he draws his sword, sliding it into the hilt at his side for reasons he can’t quite explain.

Knocking on the door makes the weight of his emotions in his chest billow up like a cloud of dust, disturbed when someone suddenly runs a hand over the surface collecting it. His chest jolts unfortunately at the realization of his actions, and he regrets it immediately.

His back is to the door and his hooves sink into the snow before he can think about it. The fur of his legs frosts, his breath the same shade of white. 

“Techno?”

For a moment, all he can think is:  _ how did I not hear the door open?  _

_ Distraction,  _ spit the voices, sounding as if they’re suddenly quite cross at him.  _ Distraction and cowardice. Turn around. Turn around turn around turn around- _

“Technoblade,” repeats the voice, less confused than before, more quietly exasperated. It’s a voice far too young to be Phil’s. It’s a voice that Techno has heard before, behind a mask, and once, up on top of a pile of metal soaked in its blood. But now in the open air it is clear, unmarred by an (impressive) fake accent and a thick layer of metal. “S’at you?”

He feels like it should be unfair, the ultimatum he’s given. Turn and face his brother, or walk into the trees, abandon his family as they’d done to him. 

Techno turns, and his breath catches in his throat.

Tommy, somehow, after nearly a decade, still looks familiar. His hair curls around the nape of his neck and just around his ears, clearly cut in a hurry, without worry for the outcome. His face smiles with a scar, one bridging over his nose, another across his neck, right where Techno remembers his hand closing around it. He’s dressed in some torn-up undershirt and a pair of baggy pants, floating around his ankles, his feet bare. Behind him is a front room that, while foggy, is still nearly the same as Techno can remember. His jaw has thickened, his nose has lengthened, his cheeks have flattened out with a lack of baby fat that Techno remembers so vividly.

Then: 

“Tommy!” Barks a voice, sounding equal parts worried and incensed. “Mate, you know it’s not a great idea to answer the door r-“

Phil cuts off once he fills the doorway behind his youngest son. Together, their similarities and differences are stark in contrast, both of them looking the part of a family whether by blood or not. They are backlit by yellow and white, the orange glow of a fire running hot inside of the home. Technoblade suddenly feels very out of place. 

But then Tommy steps forward, shooting Phil’s lost expression a soft smile, a roll of his eyes. And then before Techno can run, he’s stepping forward, hissing out a quiet noise of pain when his bare feet sink into snow. His eyes dart down to the powdery white and then back to Techno.

“It’s freezing out here,” Tommy remarks lamely. Matter of fact. “Quit making us stand out here, dickhead.”

Techno doesn’t respond. For a moment, he has the ridiculous impulse to act like he has never left, like he’s been with Tommy all this time, to huff and roll his eyes and shove the boy in the shoulder. 

_ Sorry,  _ suggest the voices, though several more shoots that suggestion down.  _ That sounds cheap. Too soon. Too soon. Too late.  _

He follows Tommy back up the steps, hand resting gently across the hilt of his sword, eyes the same, on his brother’s back. Phil watches him with a scrutinizing look -- something he ignores, pretending not to notice, not to care -- and shuts the door behind them the moment they’re all back inside. Then, the elder man sighs, and Techno looks up. 

The house has barely changed. The ancient couch in the living room is still there, an ugly, dark shade, stains dappling its backside. Techno can see the one he’d left when he was only six, spilling Phil’s cup of tea on it. He’d been so determined to help he hadn’t even noticed it’d accidentally gone all across the fabric. The fireplace still has the same old netherack, lit by a flame that sways to the sound of its crackles, popping occasionally with the telltale rhythm of the nether. In the kitchen sits the ancient table that has been there -- for as far as he knows -- before he was born. The lights are off, shadows carving deep into the wooden floors with the flickering candlelight spread about. The dishes in the sink are the same ones that Techno can remember drinking from, eating from, at family dinners and by himself all the same.

The house has barely changed, but everything is inextricably different.

“Are you thirsty?” Asks Phil, and Techno’s attention snaps back to the man. He cocks a head, extends a wing, into the kitchen, feathers fluttering in the direction of two mugs, sitting on the counter. It’s a gesture so normal that he might not have ever thought anything of it before. But after so many years of his father’s absence, it has his knuckles tightening their grip on the hilt of his sword, an effort to keep nausea at bay. 

“A little.”

Tommy, behind his father, snorts. The tension in the room relaxes some at the small noise, and Phil shakes his head. He assesses the mugs on the counter and then picks one up, sloshing the liquid about inside with a thin hand, the light bouncing off the blue ceramic giving his hand an almost purple sheen. “You still like chamomile, hm?”

Techno nods and Phil looks up, holding the cup to his son with a suggestive hand. He steps back out of the kitchen after grabbing Tommy’s mug, handing it to the boy -- currently doing grabby hands, though in a lazy fashion, face expressionless -- and then the other to Techno. It hits him, suddenly, that his father is giving up his mug.

As if sensing his middle son’s refusal, Phil shakes his head. The man is nearly two feet shorter than Techno -- all of his family are, Wilbur being the closest at 6 feet and 5 inches. Phil, at 5 feet and 11 inches, has always been the second shortest, Tommy the last. It’s clear that Tommy was never meant to  _ stay  _ so short, though, as he’s several inches taller than his father now. The last time Phil had measured Techno he’d come out at 6 feet and 9 inches. The last time he had done so by himself, three years ago, he’d been over 7 feet. 

The height difference shows, but his father looks no less imposing as he continues to shove the mug into Techno’s hands. It’s warm -- the first warm thing he’s touched in… however many days it has been since he was in L’Manberg, Carl’s reins in his hands -- and his fingers shake as he brings it to his lips, pretending not to notice that both his father and brother stare at him as he does so, eyes tracing the movement of his arms. 

“S good,” he says, raspily. The tea is unsugared and without milk, the same way he’d preferred to drink it as a child. He clutches it in both hands to disguise the shake between them. 

Then, Tommy takes a drink from his own cup. He slurps loudly, and Phil leaves the room, walking back into the kitchen in silence to make his own cup.

Techno is left discarded in the front room when Tommy wanders to the living room, curling up into the arm of a chair. It’s Techno’s old chair, actually, and he’s sure the boy does so to be purposefully antagonistic. The sound of a spoon against ceramic and a kettle from the kitchen are loud and overwhelming to him after days alone in the forest, and so he follows his brother, standing awkwardly between the couch and a side table.

“Are you… gonna sit?”

He startles when Phil comes into his line of sight again, holding his own cup with a quizzical expression. His is a shade lighter than Techno’s, clearly touched with sugar. The teabag is still inside of it, and he stirs it one-handedly. When Techno looks closer, he sees small scars, crisscrossing the knuckles that hold the handle of the mug. 

“Yes,” he says, oh-so gracefully. But Phil’s lips just quirk up into a small smile, and he nods, stepping softly into the living room and wings prodding his son to follow. Phil doesn’t take the armchair he did when Techno was a child -- a slightly mushy green hunk of fabric and feather-stuffed pillows -- instead sinking onto the floor with a huff and a crack of his back, leaning onto the front of the couch. His eyes glaze as he stares into the fire, wings flexing and flexing over the furniture behind him.

Tommy leans over, hunching. He stares at Techno, unbothered with concealing his eyes, clearly hungering for answers. Techno just sits down on the couch -- as far from his father and his brother as he can get -- and settles his cup between his thighs, staring into the murky water as a futile distraction. He realizes a moment later that he’s begun to spread mud all over the place, but Phil sends him a quelling look the moment he makes to stand. 

“You’ve got my hat?” 

Techno suddenly realizes the man is right, and he turns, plucking the muddy thing up off the couch with a grunt. Phil snorts at its bedraggled condition, making a big show of dusting off the sodden mud and torn edges.

He does not put it on. It squelches when he sits it in front of the fireplace.

“Thanks, mate,” he says, though, appreciatively, and so Techno doesn’t credit it as a complete failure.

Then, there’s a weight on the couch beside him. Techno turns, blinking in surprise, as blue hands and blue fingers and empty white eyes appear, a half-smirk of a grin rippling upward mere inches from his face. 

He drops the tea on the ground, the cup shattering where it hits the floor. Techno is up and onto his feet in an instant, suddenly feeling very lucky that he’d had the paranoia to leave his sword out of his inventory. He grips the hilt and pulls it free, slicing through the thing beside him without hesitation.

Blue floods the misty area where his sword passes through, suddenly incorporeal. 

Wilbur --  _ his brother his dead brother his older brother his partner --  _ lets out an  _ aw of dismay  _ and pats his chest, forming once again into a solid, yellow-sweater-clad mass. Techno feels like he should strike again, but a hand lands on his elbow when he reels back to continue, and he turns, vision red, about to strike again, only to find that Tommy stands there, face serious as a grave. 

Serious as  _ the dead. _

“That was mean,” says the voice of his  _ dead fucking brother,  _ when Techno looks between him and his  _ alive fucking brother,  _ eyes wide with disbelief. 

_ “Heh?”  _ Techno gasps, suddenly realizing he is dangerously out of breath and light-headed, mouth dropping open, brow furrowed both in confusion and  _ rage,  _ at the audacity of this  _ thing  _ to pose as his brother.  _ “Heh?  _ What-“

But Tommy and Phil don’t look phased in the slightest. They look, in fact,  _ tired.  _ Dizziness passes over Techno at the whiplash of realizing neither of them are angry in the slightest.

“He’s a ghost, Techno,” says Tommy, and things don’t make any fucking _sense,_ even as Techno nods. The absolute absurdity of the situation just seems like it can’t quite hit. Techno remembers again how his father had once described the feeling of being taken over the voices. He wonders if this is truly it, the dull pounding in his temples, the heat, pooled in his head with the ache between his eyes. “It’s Wilbur, I promise,” Tommy continues, his hand moving away from Techno’s elbow as he sits back down, moving back to his tea as nonchalantly as anything ever. “Stop trying to murder your siblings.”

Oh- that was  _ maybe  _ called for, but Techno can’t help but flinch in irritation. (In disgust, too, at his actions.) “He-  _ heh?” _

“Would you- man, would you stop saying that?” whines Wilbur, in a voice so awfully  _ Wilbur  _ that it physically hurts, the pain just below his heart and rushing up towards his arteries at an alarming speed. “It’s  _ boring _ .”

Someone touches Techno’s sword hand, a gentle brush of the fingers. To anyone else he might’ve snapped, cutting their arm from their torso -- but he is… with his family. (Is he?) and so he turns, face still one of disbelief, to stare at Phil, shaking his head with an expression half of amusement and half of sadness. 

“He appeared a few weeks ago, Tech. That’s why I went up to L’Manberg,” Phil says gently, and it  _ hurts.  _ “I wanted to tell you about him.”

“I would’ve visited eventually,” says Wilbur, shrugging one shoulder, leaning over to cradle his chin in his hands. “I- I just got a little sidetracked!”

“He has a bright blue sheep,” says Tommy, completely unhelpfully. “A really- really  _ rude one.” _

“He is not  _ rude,”  _ Wilbur responds, frowning. Techno puts his sword away on autopilot, finding himself no longer filled with rage; instead with guilt, and whiplash so harsh he thinks his neck must be broken, and a continued sense that he and his surroundings are not real. “You’re just-“

“Wilbur,” Techno blurts, voice probably more emotional than it has been in days, actually surprised. “You’re a ghost.”

“Ghostbur,” corrects his brother, with a pointed look. Techno blinks. “I’m Ghostbur! Alivebur is Alivebur, which I am  _ not.  _ Do you want some blue, Technoblade?”

As he nods, hazy and distracted and bordering on unaware, he realizes his mouth is still open. He shuts it with an embarrassingly loud  _ click,  _ stretching out a hand to accept the pile of  _ dye  _ his brother places on his hand. Wilbur’s fingers brush his own, and for one, awful moment, all he can feel is his corpse.

Techno had been the one to climb up into the hole where his brother had died. There had been two swords in the sunken pit of that control room -- one where Phoenix had enacted revenge on his father, the other permanently lodged in Wilbur’s chest. It had been an old wound, by then, hours after the initial stopping of his heart. It had been crusted with blood, the blade having shoved through and then back up when Wilbur had fallen to the ground, tip of the sword bent back inside his body. His legs had been folded at the knees and beneath him. His arms had been relaxed for the first time in their life, so fragile, so  _ cold,  _ when Techno had stooped down, laid them gently across Wilbur’s chest, and picked him up off the cold floor.

To leave his brother in his tomb, constructed of madness and suicide, would be unthinkable. Techno had held a private burial as far from L’Manberg as he could get. As far from the last, far-reaching vestiges of Wilbur’s dying madness as there was to go when staying within the borders of his world. Of the place that had destroyed him.

Wilbur’s hands are still cold, now. But their fingers move of their own accord. The thin, lithe figure of his bones are outlined by light blue skin, the same fragile hands he’d had in common with his father. Those hands had learned early how to strum a guitar, how to plant a rose, how to scoop into a chest and pluck the heart from within, a triumphant grin attached. Wilbur had been mad and maddening all in one. L’Manberg had only expedited the process.

“-no? Hey, you ok?”

Techno realizes quite suddenly that he’s spilled his blue. His breath hitches in his throat, suddenly so sickeningly dizzy and guilty over spilled dye that he nearly falls. Wilbur had been a force like fire beside his side, the two of them killing and ruling in tandem, dancing a spin of steps all their own through lands they would  _ make  _ theirs. The colored gift tumbles to the ground like a pile of ash. 

Cold hands come up and cup his jaw. He feels himself being moved closer, though he only recognizes the touch through the memories in his mind. His vision is working but not his own, flickering with uncertainty, even the voices not daring to intrude as he feels himself being led back down to sit on the couch.

Someone is speaking, but it isn’t he who listens. It’s someone from years ago, no axe, blood discarded, eyes on the stars and a message of caution in his mind. It rings through that person’s ears, though they are as dead as the person speaking.

“-oh, I remember that, too!” Says Wilbur, crouched on his heels, bent over in a thinking position, though one of his hands still lies in Techno’s. “When I broke you out of prison, nice work, anyways, whatever you did to piss Dream off so badly.” He looks up and smiles at his brother, eyes warm in a way his hands will never be again, crinkling with smile lines that can never get deeper, frozen in time. It’s like watching an old photo take life, but Techno cannot deny just how  _ right  _ its mannerisms are reflected. “And- oooo, you freaked the fuck out when I showed you Fundy, whoops-”

“It’d been two weeks,” Techno says, barely more than a whisper, “and you hadn’t contacted me. Then you suddenly had some idiot of a child to carry around.”

Wilbur continues with a laugh -- but he doesn’t seem to remember the full event, as he continues to recount his experiences. Techno’s eyes feel infinitely heavy, so weighed down by exhaustion, by pain, by the effort to keep from collapsing in on themselves as he is once again forced to look at the corpse of his brother.

Unconsciousness is a welcome gift. 

\---

Tommy is conflicted, when he sees his brother outside.

A part of him wants to do what he has always wanted to do. What he’d planned to do, when he’d flown into the SMP, on wings and motivation made of fire. He almost does it, almost shuts the door with a slam, almost tells Phil it had been nothing but the wind that had knocked, howling like a lonely ghost. Techno seems fraught with indecision just as much as his brother, because he pauses when Tommy decides his vindictiveness can wait, calling out for the man who had walked out on him and his father years ago. 

When Techno is back inside the house, he leaves the job of asking questions to his father. Techno is bedraggled and injured. There is a sprawling patch of red on his side, a large hole in his shirt covered in mud and old bandages. His face is white with cold, the small patch of facial hair on his chin turning into a full-on goatee. The hair on his head, so long it had swung about his thighs when Tommy had met him again, is gone, cut into a short cropped and ill-managed style. 

Everywhere on his body is caked mud and blood, his knuckles stained the same as the rest of him, but clutching a hat and the hilt of a sword respectively. 

Technoblade has never been the type of person to apologize. To cry. To laugh. He has been the one to be stoic and intimidating in the back of the room, dryly humorous and sarcastic when it suited him. Tommy watches his brother from his chair, as he sinks into a couch with an expression that cannot be described as anything but utterly  _ lost,  _ and he almost thinks it isn’t fair.

Tommy can remember the feeling of metal hitting his skin. He can feel his bones crush in an agony seldom felt, entire body buckling, spine shredded under the weight of several anvils. He can remember standing on top of those anvils a moment later, heart thudding so hard he could feel the impact in his  _ soul,  _ both an after effect of the Totem and his intense desire to survive. He remembers, most of all, looking down from the skies and watching as Techno’s fingers dispatched several citizens at once, cold and skilled and calculating.

Then, he thinks that whatever fairness is, it probably doesn’t apply to Tommy and his family anymore.

Technoblade falling unconscious is a relief when it finally happens. He’d been sagging over for minutes by then, breathing heavy and ragged, a clear fever flush to his temples. The wound on his side stinks of infection and uncared for flesh, rotting and fetid. Phil and Ghostbur sigh in tandem.

“I haven’t seen him like that in a very long time, I think.” Ghostbur’s voice is less foggy than usual, and Tommy runs a hand across his face in exhaustion. (Why can’t he be the one to bring Wilbur back? Why does it have to be someone so unfamiliar?) The ghost stands up, something about him more solid than before. “He looks… sad.”

Tommy looks over to his brother. To the way his head rolls back, his throat bobbing in its efforts to take in air. To the mud-and-blood-soaked surface of the couch behind him. He remembers the cold bite of metal to his skin, of the feeling of blood rippling down his scalp. 

“He does,” Tommy admits, voice small. He feels as if there’s no room left for him in this house, now that Techno has returned. It’s an intrusive thing to think about. He stands as Phil does.

“I’m going to get something to clean that wound,” Phil says, voice determined, firm. His hat is still on the couch where he’d put it, seeming to fill up all the space in the world, Techno along with it. “Can someone get me a sleeping potion? He’ll probably put up some sort of fight.”

Tommy snorts, something sharp giving way within him at the thought. What right does Techno have to be violent still? What right does he have to do anything at all? But he nods regardless, leaving the room and padding softly into the bathroom. 

There are several potions at the bottom of a basket under the sink, all newly brewed, the ones before Phil had returned all gone bad. He pulls out a light, blue-grey one, derivative of a potion of weakness. It makes his feathers bristle, and for a moment, he just thinks about the last time someone had used a potion on  _ him.  _

(But he loves his brother. And Ender does that fucking  _ hurt  _ to understand _.) _

When Tommy re-enters the living room, Phil has already set a roll of bandages on the floor, a bowl of water beside it. He sits next to Techno and runs his fingers lightly over the gash on his side. He looks up at Tommy with a soft, thankful smile, and takes the potion from him, pouring only a few drops into Techno’s open mouth, tipping his jaw up to close it once the liquid is swallowed.

Tommy watches his dad work from the side. Wilbur, at some point, disappears, but neither of them takes any notice. Techno isn’t awake to worry, either, though there is no doubt in Tommy’s mind that he would if he could. The wound on his brother’s side is a satisfying, long, jagged thing, inflicted by his own hands. Tommy feels victorious. 

_ No, no no no you don’t. It smells like rot. It smells like sick. It smells like dying. _

(He has to agree. Something selfish inside of him -- justifiable, he thinks, though he knows he’s lying to himself -- wants to lie, wants to say he could never give a single shit about Techno, after so long being  _ abandoned.) _

Tommy gets up and leaves the room around the third time Phil has to get up and change the bowl of water.

Is it selfish of him, to hate his brother? To hate him, even in his injured state, even after he’d killed for Tommy’s escape? Absolutely. And subconsciously, he feels terrible for it. But Tommy knows in his chest that suppression is the only way he will get through this alive, and he does so with glee. Techno has  _ betrayed him,  _ several times over. He won’t let himself get close enough to let it happen again. 

The next morning, Techno is awake at around noon. 

He’d always been an early riser when he’d been at home, coffee in hand and Phil at his side, the second to wake. They’d be found by Wilbur, then Tommy, who would stay and play in his room and in the garden for hours before he’d actually go and bother his family, as per Techno’s  _ very  _ stern instructions. 

Things have already been proven to have changed, though. Tommy is up first -- he’d felt the tug of sleepwalking around his chest, only quelled when he felt Phil’s wings draped tiredly around his entire family, all in the living room.

So, when Techno’s eyes slide open and he lets out a gasp, Tommy is in the kitchen to hear it. He doesn’t interfere, watching his brother with narrowed eyes as he catching his breath, one hand moving from the couch cushions to prod at the re-bandaged wound on his side.

Their eyes catch when Techno turns around. Tommy does  _ not  _ blink first. 

“Hello,” says Tommy sullenly, raising his cup of water in greeting. His eyes sting. Techno can keep from blinking for quite a long time, it seems. 

Techno nods, a slow incline of the head, and looks at Tommy as if his attention is still on someone else. “How long have I been asleep?”

He considers telling his brother a week, or a month, or something even worse. He grunts instead, shrugging a shoulder as he leans over the table and takes a drink. “I dunno- all night. S’ like… noon, I think.”

“Ah,” Techno says, painfully awkward. Then, after a long pause, in which they both blink several times, eyes clearly stinging: “Why… Am I not muddy?”

“Because Mr. Philza Death Angel is a merciful sorta guy,” Tommy deadpans, as if the answer should be obvious. He takes another long, silent sip, watching his brother with shrouded, cautious eyes. Techno is less flushed than the night before, the only red left a strip of color down his neck, sweat matting his hair to the back of the couch. “Why did you come here?”

Techno does not flinch. He has never been the one to, and especially not at Tommy’s intrusive questions, though he hasn’t had a chance to hear them in years. But he does shift restlessly, pulling his hand from his wound and trying to rest it on the hilt of his sword. When he realizes it’s gone, his brow furrows in confusion. “Heh- Where-”

“Nabbed it,” Tommy tells him, with a smack of his lips. “We thought you might try to murder dad. Or me. Seeing as you stabbed Ghostbur.”

Techno nods at this as if it's the most rational thing he has heard in years. Tommy thinks he might just be a little too out of it to understand everything right now, because a moment later, he falls right back asleep. Tommy really, truly, does not mind. 

(But he misses his brother, as the voices remind. He chides them right back, saying the brother he’d looked up to hasn’t been alive in years.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Techno: I am an anime boy with very pretty anime boy hair.  
> Techno: GAGHJDGKFGKSDJFGBDBDKJFFGERUGHODKSFJGBKDJFGBJKDGHKSDJFGBL NEVERMIND. 
> 
> Tommy: My brother sucks.  
> Tommy: *Sobbing* 
> 
> Techno: I am the epitome of strength and stoicism.  
> Techno, passing out because of a fever and a neglected wound: ?????? I promise this has never happened before
> 
> \---
> 
> So! This chapter! A bit of a bigger one than I've done in a while. Unfortunately, my hands and wrists have started... despising me, as of recent, and I suspect it has something to do with how damn much I've been writing and working. I probably need to get myself checked up on at this point, but yknow. No gain without a little pain. Hopefully this doesn't mean anything about my update schedule, but if I suddenly start getting slower, I might just be needing to take a break because my fingers are evil bastards.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Blows kiss at all the SBI fans in my comments* *Blows kiss at all the Jschlatt Dream SMP character fans in my comments*
> 
> Wait wait wait as I was writing this note I noticed. Uh. 11053 hits????? Wh at????? That's the most I've ever gotten on here, holy cow! Thank you all so much!

Techno is sick for almost an entire week before his fever breaks.

It’s a slow, back-and-forth process, with wet towels and heavy blankets and an itch in his wound that Phil won’t let him touch. 

It’s as if he is five again, just growing into the world, catching a cold when he stays out in the snow for too long. He’d been bedridden for almost two days with the force of that. Techno has never been one to get sick often, but when it hits, it hits hard. His piglin side, sensitive to cold and anything the nether would’ve burnt through the moment it entered a portal, can be a great asset. But during sickness? It’s nothing but a hindrance.

And so, he’s reminded of that time when he was five, and Wilbur had stuttered his way through half the storybooks in the house, and Tommy hadn’t yet been around to pester or worry. Phil had been so unbothered by his son’s disease, though, and so neither Techno nor Wilbur was scared.

Techno, as he’s grown older, has recognized Phil’s uncaring not as a lack of worry, but a strong front. He’s had to put up the same facade himself, many times when he would’ve preferred to cut the issue down to the root and kill it.

Things have clearly changed. Tommy is cold to him, spending less and less time in the house, even though it clearly irks him to have to leave to avoid his brother. Wilbur is more dreamy than ever, with half a memory and in a state of death just as reduced. Phil, once so dependent and strong, even in the face of sickness, death, danger- is distant. 

He brings Techno tea and initiates soft conversation, and he flees just as quickly. He migrates out of the living room and spends hours in his room, barely a noise from within. Tommy and he have fallen into a rhythm -- an unfinished, tentative thing, ready to fall apart if either one pushes too quickly -- but it is not one that Techno has been factored into.

He feels like he’s spending his days walking across a wire, waiting either to fall or to have it snap beneath his feet.

But for the time being, the only thing to snap is his fever. It breaks in the night, a much faster process than the days it had taken for it to hit him. Techno feels quite a bit less like he’s walking on autopilot when he awakens, the awful hot-cold of sickness finally releasing him. 

Sunshine filters in through the windows of the cabin. It hits the floor and sways, broken occasionally when a cloud passes over them or trees bend just far enough to brush the warm yellow glow. He’s still propped up on the couch, though it has been cleaned since his initial entrance, an arm laid across his stomach. His mind feels truly empty for the first time in years, as he stares at the light, back pressed up against a pillow.

It might’ve felt right if he had been a few years younger. But -- used to a lifestyle of politics and fighting and contention, two people pulled apart till the string between them snaps -- it's unsettling now. And, despite the stiffness of several days rest, he stretches, hooves settling on the ground as he pulls himself to stand. His back cracks several times before it feels right again, and he grunts as his neck makes an excessive amount of noise, practicing a few stretches that he knows will make him feel a bit more alive.

The sun shining in from the window reminds him a bit of what he’s missing by being here. L’Manberg is no longer his to protect. He has thrown out his claim on any land, any piece of that place that might have  _ ever  _ been home. 

But he’s filled with an odd sense of giddiness as he realizes, in the end,  _ he has prevailed.  _ He has not become Icarus as his brother had wanted, neither a hero nor a foolish, broken boy. He is more likely the fish in the sea below Icarus as he laughed, swooping far up, then falling, breaking the surface of the water as if it was concrete. Doomed to watch, then swim away just as quickly.

He thinks of what that makes Phil. Is he the sun, Icarus’s doom? Or is he the wings, trying to save him, but ultimately failing? Who is Tommy, too, in this world where Wilbur is the dead one and the rest of them are left to ask where they fit back into a defunct family?

Techno thinks Tommy might be the one writing the story. Making it as miserable and fiery and doom-laden as possible. He doesn’t seem very fond of anyone in his family right now, and Techno would be surprised to hear that his brother doesn’t at least subconsciously want them all a little bit dead.

Techno feels some of that same ire, at times. But Phil had explained his absence during one of Techno’s longer lucid moments. It’d been around 4 in the morning, and Techno had been breathing into a cup of tea, and his father had started, unprompted, to explain. It seemed like he was doing so more as an apology rather than an excuse, and Techno had been struck by just how  _ wrong  _ Wilbur and he had taken their dad’s sudden disappearance. 

They’d always thought him a bit infallible. Ender Dragon Slayer, Angel of Death, father of three kids that got into more than enough trouble to turn his blond hair grey. To hear he’d been defeated so easily -- it almost makes Techno laugh when he thinks of his childhood naivety, his thought that his father would never fall. 

But Wilbur and Techno-  _ Ender,  _ they’ve got trauma of their own. He’s sure that no one else in the family besides him and maybe Phil will admit it, but not a single one of them has gotten through their ruined childhoods alright. Not even remotely safe.

He finishes his stretches and turns to the kitchen, looking up into the clock and deducing that it is the early hours of the morning. When he was a child, Tommy probably would’ve already been racing around his heels. Phil would’ve been making breakfast. Wilbur would’ve been dead asleep. But the kitchen is empty, so he enters without a worry of who might see as he starts to rummage about. 

The trashcan is full of old and dull, grey spices. Ones he’d taken hours to grow and pick as a child. The cupboards and icebox are close to empty, save for the meats stacked up in the bottom of the fridge, red and skinned. But there is coffee on the very top shelf of the cupboard he rummages through now, and he hums when the brown grounds inside reveal themselves as strong and healthy.

It smells a bit burnt when he pours his drink into a mug. And though he wishes a bit for the much higher quality coffee he’d once been able to buy himself, before resources in L’Manberg had become entirely too strained to even support most of its citizens, let alone its rulers, he sips it gratefully. 

It’s the same sort he’d drunk when he was younger. Phil obviously still buys the same brand. Techno knows it isn’t Tommy stocking the house with the stuff -- the boy would drink sugary caffeinated drinks and nothing else, refusing to touch coffee unless he really had to. 

Sunshine floods the kitchen countertops. Techno places a hand against the cool marble surface and sighs.

Someone interrupts the sun. He turns, and Tommy is there, shadow cast and moving back and forth, now out of Techno’s vision. His eyes are shut. There is a ragged slice on his inner wrist, attached to a hand that glows with light, purple color. An End Crystal, useless without obsidian, looks almost gentle between his fingers.

For a moment, Techno just watches. His brother’s eyes stay closed, his breath gentle, even, deep.

Then, he sets his mug down, taking a step forward and bracing himself to interrupt whatever sort of fit his brother has found himself the prey of. He’s seen sleepwalking before -- Fundy had, oddly enough, done it quite often, walking through the halls of the White House like a ghost, only awoken by his father -- but Tommy seems different. He seems less peaceful than most, brow scrunched, mouth wound tightly shut.

“He’ll wake up.”

Techno turns to the side, finding that Wilbur has suddenly appeared, torso protruding from the wall. He doesn’t flinch this time, but he does shift away, surprised and unnerved by the sudden appearance. He has yet to grow accustomed to his dead brother walking around the house, a shade of his former self. Techno thinks that all things considered, his feelings around the matter are warranted. 

“Mhm,” Techno says, eyes not leaving Wilbur. His skin slowly grows more opaque as he pulls himself out of the wall, making a big show of adjusting the beanie on his head. “Does he do this a lot?”

“Ehhh _ hh.  _ He tries. I think he usually ties himself up to his bed, or the fireplace, or whatever. Don’t tell Phil,” Wil says hastily, voice as conspiratorial as a ghost’s can be. “He doesn’t like it. I think Tommy does it after he goes to sleep.”

“Phil’s an insomniac,” Techno posits. “Does Tommy sleep at all?”

Wilbur just shrugs, demonstrating his lack of knowledge in a way that is less than promising. 

Techno turns cautiously back to his other brother -- now a step or two closer, the Crystal’s bright purple mingling with the light from the window behind them. Techno has always heard of people being more peaceful looking when they’re sleeping, but Tommy looks anything but. 

So, he knows that standing there in a state of half-waking can’t be nice. Techno sets his cup down once more, and walks past the kitchen table, looking down at his younger brother.

From up close, he can see that Tommy’s jaw is tensed, his body shaking. He sweats buckets. His face, rather than one of confusion or anger or hate, is one of acceptance. As if he’s been handed a bomb and knows he’s the only one with the light to set the fuse.

Techno sets a hand down on Tommy’s shoulder and shakes, gently. Night terrors are the ones you aren’t supposed to wake people up from, and so Techno isn’t worried, not as Tommy’s eyes sluggishly open. 

The Crystal in Tommy’s hands dissipates as Techno flicks it into his own inventory. He doesn’t know what will happen if his brother -- war victim, war legend, a war in of itself -- wakes up to himself holding an eldritch bomb, but he doesn’t want to find out. Tommy doesn’t move or fuss at Techno’s movements, not even when he starts to lead the younger boy by his shoulder, gently steering him towards the kitchen table.

“C’n walk by m’self,” Tommy says suddenly, though his voice is dazed, quiet. Techno feels something inside of him start to reawaken. Call it protectiveness, or worry, or being a brother. He’s not felt the instinctual need to protect Tommy since he realized the boy was “dead.” He sounds so  _ young,  _ and Techno is struck with the idea that really, he still is.

“Of course you can,” says Wilbur in the background, as he pulls out a chair for Tommy to slide into. It takes a bit of limb-maneuvering, but he’s plunking his head down into one hand a moment later, yawning. “Techno’s just being charitable.”

“Techno?” Tommy says, voice soft and confused. It’s a far cry from the biting, sarcastic griping Techno is used to. He pushes the chair in behind the boy and moves back to his coffee, sitting across from his brother. 

“Mhm.”

“T’chnoblade’s a cock.”

“Technoblade is right here, drinking his coffee,” says the man in question, sipping silently. Tommy’s eyes open a little wider, and he assumes a dopey grin, pulling one hand off his lap to salute. But then the smile drops, and he seems to awaken more, head picking itself up off of his hands.

“How am I down here?” He asks, voice genuinely mistrustful as if he thinks one of his brothers has carried him down from his bed for some nefarious purpose.

Tommy had never done any of this when he was a child. He’d had the same mediocre sleep schedule as any nine-year-old, up at dawn and only falling asleep near midnight. He was hyperactive and lazy all at once. 

He hadn’t pulled weapons in nightmares, or stalked down into the kitchen in the middle of the night and pulled all the knives out of the drawers, shoving them into his inventory, or stormed out into the middle of a snowstorm, Phil being forced to retrieve him.

“You walked down here,” Techno tells him, as he takes another drink. “Tried to explode things.”

Tommy flinches, his eyes darting to the ground as they widen. Techno makes a mental note not to say that again, and he sighs, running a hand across his chest, across the wound on the side. He feels like he’s navigating a minefield in regards to speaking with his family. He almost wishes he could go back to when Tommy was masked. There would be far less guilt in Techno’s chest at every little frown.

“You didn’t, though!” Wilbur adds charismatically, floating over on legs that have gone misty. “What was the dream about?”

“Oh- ah, yknow.” He waves a flippant hand about, still not meeting either of their eyes. “Girls. Lots of… mhm. Girls.”

Techno avoids thinking about the sort of girls Tommy would be blowing up. But the boy is looking significantly more awake, now, and so he picks up his own mug and nudges it towards his brother. “Do you want some?”

Tommy eyes it warily, switching between clear distrust and a hesitant want. Techno rolls his eyes and takes another drink, demonstrating the lack of poison in a way he hopes is brotherly, not rudely. “Take it. I’m almost finished, anyway.”

It’s a lie. But Tommy takes it either way, and Techno feels a little, irrepresable thrill go through him. 

Technoblade is the king of being incapable of nuance and bad at emotions. It’s been a part of him for years -- in the way he’d strike first and ask later as a child, and the way he’d stuttered through even accepting the fact that he was an uncle, years later. It runs in his blood, he thinks. Phil has never been a perfect father. Wilbur has never been a perfect brother. Tommy has been… gone.

But he has questions. And one thing he has been, above all, is entitled to answers.

“Where are the crystals from?” He wonders, starting out small. He knows of 2b2t -- though his visit was only brief, and he remembers very little besides the battles he and Wilbur had fought in. Tommy’s head snaps up from the cup, glaring suddenly. But Techno just shrugs, wrapping his arms around himself. “I’m curious.”

_ “Curious,”  _ Tommy says, sneering. “They’re illegal items,  _ Blade,  _ you should know that.”

“Don’t let Dream see them out,” says a new voice, and everyone turns around to see Phil in the doorway. He’s fully dressed and somehow more presentable than all of them despite the early hour, every feather in order and his hat finally cleaned of mud. Techno itches to have his coffee back, for something to do with his hands. “That fucker’ll scrape the enamel off your bones.”

“I’m not scared of  _ Dream,”  _ Tommy says, making a funny face. 

“Techno got arrested by Dream.”

“We know, Ghostbur” says everyone else, save for Techno. He huffs his disapproval. 

Phil assumes a place in the kitchen Techno hadn’t realized still exists. They  _ all  _ fall into their own, somehow, though things have been shoved a few inches out of place. 

They’re a family. For better or for worse, in life and death, they are a family. But that doesn’t mean they function any longer, puzzle pieces that have grown and changed in each other’s absence. Silence buzzes. 

“But,” Phil says, suddenly, cautiously quiet. It has all of his children tensing. He does too, for a moment, before he lets out a sigh, and his eyes go hard with determination. Techno’s father has never been a weak-willed man, and it is clear he intends to see his question through all the way to an answer. “I think it’s time we all talked through things, isn’t it.”

The silence in the kitchen is as good an answer to what his sons think as any. None of them seem particularly comfortable -- save for Wilbur, who’s too out of it to care. 

He  _ avoids conflict,  _ as Techno has been told. It’s clear in the way he bobs and floats and smiles as if nothing is amiss at all. Techno is reminded instantly of just how different alive-Wilbur had been, all anger and angst and hatred that suffocated you as soon as he made it known, and he  _ always did.  _ Techno could combat it with his own blood, with every fiber of the hate he’d fueled himself on. He thought, sometimes, that they’d balanced each other out. Then Wilbur had gone and exploded. 

But Wilbur looks just as clueless as a child. Tommy looks uncomfortable. Phil looks solid, determined. Techno thinks, if he could look in a mirror, he would look like he’s dreading the moments to come. 

“We can’t tiptoe around each other for the rest of time,” continues their father, breaking the silence, and for the first time in years, Techno really feels like he’s being talked to by a parent. “I don’t…. No. I don’t want that for us. We’re all gonna be one second away from going ballistic until the end of time.”

“I’ve… got a list. Of things I’ve noticed,” Phil explains, as he pulls a spotless piece of parchment out of his inventory. He breathes out a heavy sigh and flattens it on the counter beside him. “Erm. Reactions, and the like, that we’ve all had to certain things. I’m not gonna turn this into an interrogation or anything, but I think we all need to have a proper discussion. Just so we can at least know what to avoid. How to- help each other.”

No one in the room speaks. The air holds itself in before anyone else can try. Even Wilbur frowns. 

But Phil just smiles, skimming a hand over the paper beneath his hand. “I know, for example, that I… fuckin  _ hate  _ spiders. It’s not anything I can’t handle, but I don’t even like the little house ones anymore. Eugh.” A little shudder runs through him, but he’s still smiling in a small, parental fashion when he turns around like he’s about to ruffle someone’s hair. His smile slips a little, into something bittersweet. “We don’t need to have this conversation now. But none of us are getting any better here, so I need us to have it eventually.”

Neither Wilbur nor Techno want to answer that, first, obviously. But Tommy’s face is obscured, and so when his voice rings out, surprising them all, Techno can’t see his expression.

“I’m tired, not half asleep,” he mutters, before finishing his coffee in the silence that ensues. “Unless these two can’t handle a little…  _ therapizing,  _ I say we get it over with.”

Techno -- who wants to argue that really, Tommy seems to be in the most need of  _ therapizing --  _ just shakes his head. Wilbur doesn’t react at all, but Phil nods, smiling. 

“Then I’ll continue,” says their father smoothly, like he’s not the only person with any confidence in this situation right now and he knows it. “I don’t like not knowing where you all are. I don’t need tabs on you all day or anything, but I am deeply uncomfortable with… all of you just disappearing at once. I’d like to at least know what you plan on doing if you’re going out.”

“What about Friend?”

“What about him?” Phil asks after a brief pause, curious as if the very nature of the question isn’t ridiculous.

Wilbur brightens. “Do you want to know where he is? He’s very important, you know, very- very- hm.”

“I’d love to know where Friend is, Ghostbur,” Phil responds in turn. “Especially when he’s with you.”

Techno knows Wilbur won’t be able to contribute much to this discussion. Trauma buried, bridges burnt, memories suppressed. But Techno also sees how he brightens --  _ actually happy looking,  _ not just vague and misty and not technically… miserable. And that’s enough.

So he extends an olive branch. 

It makes him deeply uncomfortable -- he’d wanted to talk to Tommy about the boy’s issues, not his  _ own --  _ but he clears his throat, arms still crossed, eyes still downcast. This way, he can’t feel when all the heads swivel to him.

“I don’t like explosions much. Could do without all the  _ noise.  _ I’m ok with the fire and the destruction and everything, but…” 

His thoughts flashback to the night Wilbur died. The  _ boom,  _ the great implosion of dirt and wood and stone and homes and people. The way the noise had seemed to rip the universe apart, even more than the explosion itself. The earth’s crust fracturing beneath them.

“Eh. Could just… do without the noise.”

Phil nods, looking back down at his paper, at the words written there, and apparently concluding that he has already written this. None of them need any elaboration on that topic, clearly. They were all there when the bombs set off. 

“So the fireplace is ok?” 

Techno nods. “Fireplace is fine. Just don’t go lighting any tnt around me.” 

Techno remembers the last time someone had tried to scare him with something like that. Fundy had rigged an air horn under his chair at his desk. He’d drawn his sword and destroyed the whole thing, his entire room ripped apart minutes later. He has no doubt he would’ve killed Fundy, as well, had he been in the room. An accident, but action nonetheless. 

No one speaks for a long moment. The silence stretches -- and had it been anyone else in that room, Techno might’ve found it comedic. It’s just a little sad now, though, like some kid’s lunch bag left out in the rain. Almost pitiful. 

“Tommy,” Phil says, and the boy looks up. “I didn’t call you a traumatized kid a few days ago for nothing.”

“You didn’t,” he says in turn, plunking his fingers across his cup rhythmically. “That makes me sound so  _ soggy.” _

“Soggy,” Techno responds from behind the boy, deadpan. “Are you calling me soggy for my rather heroic sacrifice? I told you all my deep, mushy feelings, and this is the thanks I get?”

Tommy turns and glares, though the two of them are clearly bantering, no fire to it all. “You’re a  _ bitch,  _ that’s what you are.”

“And you’re a traumatized kid,” Techno says, as simple as that. “Who sleepwalks with illegal items and hoards weapons.”

For a moment, he thinks he might’ve crossed a line. Tommy’s glare deepens into something cold, less angry than it is  _ concealed.  _ Techno holds the gaze with a softer one of his own, his arms still crossed nonchalantly, hoping that he won’t have to break first. To apologize. 

Tommy deflates. Visibly, like a balloon, into his chair. “I don’t like people touching me without permission. Almost beat the shit outta Wil back ‘n L’Manberg for it. Especially not around my arms.”

Phil lets out an audible sigh of relief (probably at the idea of not having to break up his two sons and their impending fistfight.) “Can I write that one down?”

“Do- do whatever you want with it,” Tommy says. Techno can recognize some of the boy's uncomfortableness in himself. 

Protecting yourself becomes a priority. Showing weakness, no matter how  _ small,  _ can be catastrophic. Even something so small as exposing your dislike of touch can lead to ruin. A brush of a shoulder, done intentionally to hurt. A tap on the back, deliberately rousing. 

Phil just nods, leaning over his paper and scribbling something down. It feels a bit like watching a doctor fill a prescription if the doctor was chewing on their lip, their wings flexing upwards in clear anxiety.

“You  _ know,  _ Technoblade,” says Wilbur, airy, in the silence. “I don’t think I like explosions much, either.”

“Oh? Alright, Ghostbur, do you wanna write that down in your memory book while I write it down here?”

The ghost perks up at being included, and nods, spinning around a little as he plucks the thin leather book from his inventory. The words inside are laced into the parchment with blue dye, and he traces his fingers over a new spot, letters and shapes forming without a pen. Phil smiles in that same, sad way he does whenever Ghostbur does something strictly Wilbur, then starts to write down Wilbur’s name next to something about explosions. 

\---

The halls of his makeshift infirmary are covered in dust. It’s not unhygienic -- or so Ponk has told him -- it’s just a thin, undisturbed layer, where feet have neglected to kick and people haven’t been dragged through in a while. Where corpses haven’t accumulated, where equipment hasn’t been discarded.

After L’Manberg’s fall, all citizens that hadn’t immediately died in the Ender-Fire needed a place to go. Jschlatt, megalomaniac, half-crazed, and trying to murder his son, had been one of them. He’s pretty sure most of the people who came with him would probably kill him without breaking a sweat, but Tubbo had seen to it that his raving and insane father was dragged off to the loony bucket instead of a pit 6 feet deep.

He walks through that same infirmary now. His hand clutches a cup of coffee. His jaw works with the nicotine gum inside, lazily chewing it and savoring the taste, the bite. When he’d been brought to Ponk, his hair had been shaved down, and it has only just been able to grow back, barely curling around the bottom of his horns.

Jschlatt does not make apologies. Not to his citizens, his friends, his fiance. (Maybe his son, but that’s a given, seeing as he’d tried to murder the kid.) He does not walk through these halls with pity or worry in his mind. 

Quackity’s room is locked. He’d been given a key by some shifty-eyed fluffy hybrid at the front desk, her captain's hat making her look very out of place, with the flowers and decorations scattering her desk. Jschlatt stands there, feet barely pressing into the door, and lets his head fall onto the wood.

“Fuck,” he murmurs. This is his last resort. He turns the key in the lock and steps inside.

At first notice, Quackity looks relatively normal. Jschlatt is instantly surprised -- being thrown off your throne by a bunch of angry citizens and, in his case, his son, did  _ not  _ put him in a good mood. His former fiance is curled up under his blankets, clutching at one edge with hands handcuffed to the rail of the bed. His eyes, though, rimmed with scars and sleepless nights, tell another story.

“Y’look like shit,” Jschlatt remarks. Quackity doesn’t respond: he sips heavily from his drink and shuts the door behind him. “Absolute shit, dollface.”

“Don’t call me that,” snaps Quackity venomously, head rolling up to meet the other’s eyes. His beanie is gone, hair shaved down to a buzzcut in the same manner as Jschlatt’s had been. 

Despite himself, Jschlatt smiles. 

“You’re looking…” He tilts his head, weighing his words,  _ “Worse for wear.  _ Havin’ fun, hm?”

“Oh, you annoying fucking prick, stop reminding me why we broke up.”

Jschlatt scoffs. A month ago those words might’ve scalded, just a little, just to the left of his cold, dead heart, his frozen spirit, his alcoholism, his addictions, his- his whatever. But now, with Quackity’s hoarse voice and broken-looking expression and form, there’s no sense in kicking a dog when it’s down. Schlatt steps further into the room, pulling a tin of nicotine gum from his pocket and unwrapping a piece.

“Open up.” Quackity eyes the stick mistrustfully. Jschlatt scoffs even harder, and waves it dramatically, only stopping when Quackity drops his stupid jaw, face completely deadpan. He nods, though, when Jschlatt feeds him the gum. “There! So much better. Can we be civil, now? For four fuckin’ minutes?”

“Or whenever I press my call button.”

“There is no call button,” Schlatt says cheerily. He pulls the shitty, rickety chair in the corner out and drapes himself across it languidly, kicking his legs up on the lip of the bed. “I got arrested and sent here too, remember?”

“What do you  _ want.” _

“I  _ want,”  _ he says, unperturbed by Quackity’s venomous attitude. “To test a theory.”

“Tub’s the new president, didja know that? Dream elected him. Apparently, the SMP and L’Manberg are trying to merge or some other dumb shit. I worked with Dream. Guys a grade-a asshole. But he’s not around to bother me and my allies anymore, now that he’s too occupied with L’Manberg. That’s good.”

“Cut to the point-“

“Tubbo is the new president of L’Manberg, Quack. And… look at us.”

The man seems to consider the words for a moment. He traces Jschlatt, lounging on the chair -- the long, stretched scar coming up from under his chin, curling about his left hand, dipping above the line of his socks. Jschlatt looks right back, at Quackity’s barely healed wounds, his massive scar, bearing the brunt of Phoenix’s explosive decision. His  _ exhausted  _ look, as if a thousand years of insomnia are catching up to him.

Jschlatt doesn’t remember how much  _ he  _ slept when he was the L’Manbergian leader. It was less than an hour every night, that’s what he is sure of. He crosses his legs and nods. 

“We’re fucking bonkers. I nearly killed my son, got the whole country blown up by some overpaid chicken. You tried to publicly  _ execute  _ said chicken and ended up getting several high-ranking officials murdered, including yourself. You’re on your last life, aren’t you?”

“You are too,” Quackity murmurs as if he hasn’t listened to anything but that. “Ponk told me. You almost lost it from a fuckin’  _ heart attack,  _ man? That’s weak. Weak as  _ fuck.” _

“You shut your- your dumb fuckin mouth, Quackity, I’m trying to be civil. My point is that even though you were generally a little off your goddamn rocker and I was always a bit too sexy to act human- we went totally off the deep end. We went absolutely  _ nuts,  _ flatty-”

“Don’t  _ fucking call me-” _

“And Tubbo is next!”

The room goes silent. Jschlatt knows his words are matter-of-fact, unbiased, unemotional. He’s purely stating the facts. He also knows that his former fiance, someone who he had once trusted with his life, can see the crumbling of that facade. He’s worried, though he sure as hell won’t admit it to anyone, not even himself.

(Cause Tubbo’s his fucking  _ kid.  _ The boy he stole from a 2b2t legend for. The boy he has killed for. The boy he nearly had executed, only saved by the same man Jschlatt stole from, years and years and years ago.)

‘It’s not normal,” Quackity admits softly. “What that country did to people. Wilbur knew it. That’s why he tried to blow it up.”

“Wilbur tried to blow up his own country because of what that country did to him. I tried to murder my kid. You tried to murder your kid’s best friend and wage war on the universe.” Jschlatt shrugs. “We all make mistakes.”

Then, he leans over, face twisting up into something far darker. “I won’t let Tubbo be the next Wilbur, Quackity. But I’m fucking banned from that stupid country forever. I want that place  _ dead.  _ It does nothing but hurt people.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Quackity snort. Jschlatt almost retorts back, but then with a pop of gum and a sigh, his ex-fiance nods. “But your right, man. L’Manberg- it’s- it’s wrong. There’s something  _ evil  _ about that shit. I felt like I woke up after a several-month-long nap when I got dragged outta there, I’m telling you.”

“Exactly!” He throws his hands up in relief. “Exactly. Wilbur’s too dead for me to ask what it was like, but I felt like my fucking brain was- was getting ripped to  _ shit  _ when they gave me the boot.”

“And you think Tubbo’s gonna go balls off too, huh?”

“I think something is deeply fucked about Wilbur’s stupid country, that’s what I think,” Jschlatt says, snorting out through his nose and flicking his ears like they’re talking about the Sunday paper or anything other than his son. But really, that’s the only way to describe it. 

(You’d turn round a corner, and your shadow would be there waiting. You’d open a door, and your cabinet would be leering, swords drawn, before you would blink, and someone would ask you to please put down the broken bottle, to please stop shouting. You’d sit down to rest and something would crawl up your spine.)

( You’d look at your family. You’d look at your  _ son,  _ and you would see nothing but knitted flesh and bone, waiting to betray you. Waiting for an excuse to be pulled apart.)

“And I think you’re probably right,” says Quackity. “But I also think whatever it is doesn’t like us much. We’re not fixing this ourselves, you know that, right?”

“No shit. We’re not fixing anything, Quack.” The man sinks backward as Jschlatt leans forward, eyes glinting with something hungry. “We’re gonna kill it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Techno: Mhmmmmm coffee go brr.
> 
> Ghhh I hope I got Quackity and Jschlatt right in here... They're actually very fun to write. As always, comments and kudos will always make my day!

**Author's Note:**

> SOOOOOO.... I've had this story rattling around in my brain for a few days now. I wanted to write something with lots of SBI in to because good lord, Tommy's "death" (I'm deep in denial) is killing me. 
> 
> Kudos and comments make my brain short circuit and I love them!! I appreciate them all, and any support is wonderful. Hope you've all enjoyed :)
> 
> Hmu on tumblr if you enjoy! [Soupsword](https://soupsword.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Er... I also have a twitter now? That site fucking TERRIFIES me but I am there at [Soupsword](https://twitter.com/Soupsword)


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